WWD: Retail store must be reimagined as the hub of a customer-centric model

Women's Wear Daily (WWD), the influential online fashion business, trend and info hub, said that data from Coresight Research had tallied store closures of more than 8,000 in 2017 in the US. In 2018, there were more than 5,500 units that shuttered. And at current levels, store closures this year will exceed last year's numbers, WDD reported.

WWD quoted a report from David Bassuk and Joel Bines, global coleaders of the retail practice at AlixPartners LLP, digitally native brands have opened hundreds of physical stores - with more on the way. Direct-to-consumer brands that have announced additional store openings include Amazon, Casper, Adore Me, Indochino, Untuckit and Warby Parker as well as Allbirds, Outdoor Voices, Rent the Runway, Ministry of Supply and The Tie Bar, among others.

"The 'click-to-brick' wave, as it is being called, is sweeping up not just well-established digital brands such as Warby Parker, Casper and even Amazon, but also relatively newer entrants like Brandless that are trying the concept on for size through temporary pop-up stores," WWD quoted Bassuk and Bines’s report. "Casper only opened its first physical outlet, stocked with its popular mattresses and also pillows and bed linen, in early 2018, but already has plans to expand to 200 physical locations within the next three years."

"So, if the recipe for legacy retailers is to close stores, why is the opposite true for digital natives? Simply put, it is because the much-discussed retail apocalypse is a retail revolution instead," they said in their report. "And this is because the store is not dead; it simply must be reimagined as the hub of a customer-centric model."