A frequent phrase in the media is that brick-and-mortar is dying, however that is far from the truth. Brick and mortar is not dead, and there are many reasons why this is not the case. According to Joshua Williams, Director of the Fashion Management MPS program at Parsons, “the biggest change in fashion retail is that e-commerce is driving innovation in brick and mortar. It’s allowed retailers a much more expansive vision--and toolset--to engage customers. While brick and mortar still accounts for the bulk of final sales, a complex customer journey back and forth across all digital and physical channels is informing that sale. And the more unified that experience is, the more likely customers will return.”

Brick-and-mortar needs to change, there’s no question about that. As the industry and landscape continue to shift, experience-driven retail will become more prominent. Buying online and picking up in store could become a universal model. As we’ve seen with the pandemic, many retailers have adapted and turned warehouses and physical retail stores into pick up locations for customers to safely grab their merchandise and be on their way. This has changed the possibilities of what a store can be. Is the drive thru GAP the new drive thru bank? It very much could be, and we might even see fewer full service stores and more drive up windows in the future.

A senior consultant at Newmine Omni-channel Consulting, Yasmine Sayed previously managed a BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) project for Barneys New York, which involved “ship from store,” a backend perspective of leveraging every single one of the store locations as distribution centers. When it comes to a retailer’s omni-channel approach during this global pandemic, Yasmine thinks this has been a wake up call for a lot of retailers and the way they approach omni-channel will affect how they come out on the other side of this pandemic.

“I think the effect that it will have post this pandemic when hopefully things go back to normal pretty soon, is that a lot of them [retailers] will realize… the importance of having the ability to switch gears quickly because you may have… something like this again...They might realize, ‘Oh wow, we never thought we needed that, but this is another way for us to increase our top line sales. So we should start, enabling these types of options for our customers so that we can be flexible when something like this hits us again.’”

Will we ever get to a point where people are standing in line waiting for product again? It doesn’t appear that it’s likely in the near future, but the desire for consumers to be in a physical store is stronger than you may think. E-commerce has its place, but the real estate and physical store experience plays a bigger and more crucial role in the consumer’s retail journey.

According to Ron Thurston, VP of Stores at Intermix, the news very much takes over the growth in ecommerce, but what the news often doesn't articulate well is that as ecommerce grows to approximately 15% of all commerce this year (from 12%), it still leaves 85% of all commerce done in brick and mortar. It’s estimated to grow by about a percentage point every year for the next few years, meaning by 2024 e-commerce will be 18% of all revenue generated and brick and mortar will be 83%.

“Retail falls into so many different categories: grocery, pharmacy, the home furnishings like luxury. It touches everyone in the world. It touches every part of our life. To not forget that the importance and relevance of brick and mortar and the experience you have with the brand doesn't happen on the website, it happens in the store. And we have this year needed to find ways to engage both channels.” Some of these features at Intermix include chatting with customers on their website in order to create a similar store experience with their in-store sales team.

Features such as this and BOPIS are used to engage and encourage omni-customers. “Ultimately, it's still a retail business and the best expression and the best experience of any brand is going to be the store. And that trend is often not as spoken about in the press,” Thurston adds. “But I think for all of us that work in it, that's the voice we need to say of like, yes, they're definitely shopping online more, but they really want to come back when they feel safe, of course. And when they feel ready to do this. And it might be in a different store than they originally shopped in because they moved. That's okay, too.”

Chief of Stores at Macy’s, Marc Mastronardi has been at the forefront of the brick and mortar evolution. As Macy’s has operated over the past 160 years, the need for constant innovation has been foundational for the retailer to keep moving forward. “You've always got to be moving to where the customer is moving and you see that show up in really different ways… Yea, you can look at very specific things that have come out of that over the last handful of years, between buy online and picking up in store and the same day delivery. And then even as we went through the COVID impact in the first half of this year, the development of contactless, curbside pickup. All of those things are kind of on the forefront of how do you continue to react and create an omni experience that works for our customer.”

At Macy’s, there’s also a major pillar of strategy around fashion. “We're curating and we're bringing together the best brands and the newest brands, and also recognize that we've got core brands that our customer has come to love and expect from us; and be able to balance how we put that out in a combined physical and digital environment that allows the customer to navigate in and out.” Mastronardi finds this necessary in order to show up as a brand, across the country, in any footprint and any place that they go, so that the consumer can understand what they’re about.

In some cases, “the death of brick and mortar” is relevant for brands needing to pull back the reins and close their stores, whether that be for the short-term need to adapt and recreate their business model, or for the overall long-term health and wellness of the company. There is no doubt that we will continue to see businesses reset with store closures and consolidated corporate offices to some degree. Although the near future appears to consist of less real estate for retail, brick-and-mortar will continue to be a critical part of the consumer journey, at least for the time being.

To listen to the interviews mentioned above, please click the links below:

Yasmine Sayed

Ron Thurston

Marc Mastronardi