A friend of mine was in Scottsdale last month for an ICSC conference where Garrick H. Brown (VP of Retail Research for the Americas at Cushman & Wakefield) delivered this retail presentation. 

My friend flipped it to me this week and below are a couple of slides that stood out as I scanned through it.

Apparently over the last five years, a new dollar store has opened every four hours in the US. That’s how quickly this category is growing. A race to the bottom.

Food halls are hot and not just in the US. Check out: “5 huge food halls opening soon in Toronto”.

This is similar to a chart I posted a few weeks ago that pegged online grocery shopping in South Korea at closer to 20%. I’m still fascinated by this market share number and want to better understand what’s driving it.

This is an interesting chart that shows the relationship between retail square footage per capita and sales per square foot per capita. The US has lots of retail space per capita but low sales. Now look at Germany.

Finally, this is a chart that shows where household growth is expected to happen from 2016 to 2025. It follows a very clear historical trend of Americans moving from cold places to warmer/hot places.

For the full presentation, click here.

Matthew Townsend of Bloomberg recently published an interesting article talking about the dominance of Amazon.com (and online shopping in general); the shift towards experiences over stuff; and the languishing brick-and-mortar brands that keep saying it’s the macroeconomy, rather their product/approach, which is causing sales to slump.

Here are a 3 excerpts that stood out for me:

Lurking behind the cliché is a hard truth these executives are eager to avoid. “All this pleading that the consumer isn’t spending is an excuse, largely from management teams whose product is less relevant,” Kernan said. “The consumer is actually driving the U.S. economy, so it’s a little ridiculous when we hear the excuse of the macro environment is not good.”

Another hurdle that isn’t going away is the shift to increased spending on experiences such as travel and classes, which make for much better posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. “Social media has really fostered a have-done environment, which is not what retailers sell,” Perkins said.

One characteristic of these struggling brick-and-mortar chains has been direct competition with Amazon. If they don’t go head-to-head with the online giant, they rely heavily on people visiting shopping centers anchored by retailers that do, such as ailing department-store chains Macy’s and Sears. One measure of store visits in the U.S. paints a dire picture, with only a dozen positive weeks over the past two years.

According to Bloomberg, 55% of online product searches start at Amazon.com. And while online sales in 2016 have only accounted for 11% of all (U.S.) retail revenue, it has represented 54% of all growth! That’s a big number, especially when you think about what that will mean over time.

Talking about the growth and threat of online shopping has become a boring truism. I know that. But are retail executives taking it seriously? The Bloomberg article gives you the sense that many are not – or at least they’re not publicly acknowledging it.

When I look around my place right now and think about where I bought each item – everything from the shoes at my door to the protein powder in my cupboard – it’s pretty amazing to think about how much I now buy online. And I’m sure that many of you are the same.

Groceries aside, I’m probably 85-90% online. What about you?

Using anonymized credit and debit card data from over 54 million Chase customers across the US, City Observatory recently published a chart showing the percentage of retail sales that goes to “small businesses” in 15 US cities.

This is based on proprietary data (2015) from JPMorgan Chase and is surely not perfect. But it’s still an interesting approximation.

At the top of the list is New York with 36% of all retail sales going to small businesses. And at the bottom of the list – keep in mind that this list only has 15 cities – is Columbus with 23% of retail sales.

One of the overarching findings was that urban centers tend to see 10-15% more retail sales going to small and medium sized businesses compared to the suburbs.

Intuitively, this makes sense to me. Space is a precious commodity in urban centers and that may naturally privilege the small operator. There’s also the question of consumer preference among urbanites.

If you’re interested, you can download the full report from JPMorgan Chase, here.

A friend of mine was in Scottsdale last month for an ICSC conference where Garrick H. Brown (VP of Retail Research for the Americas at Cushman & Wakefield) delivered this retail presentation. 

My friend flipped it to me this week and below are a couple of slides that stood out as I scanned through it.

Apparently over the last five years, a new dollar store has opened every four hours in the US. That’s how quickly this category is growing. A race to the bottom.

Food halls are hot and not just in the US. Check out: “5 huge food halls opening soon in Toronto”.

This is similar to a chart I posted a few weeks ago that pegged online grocery shopping in South Korea at closer to 20%. I’m still fascinated by this market share number and want to better understand what’s driving it.

This is an interesting chart that shows the relationship between retail square footage per capita and sales per square foot per capita. The US has lots of retail space per capita but low sales. Now look at Germany.

Finally, this is a chart that shows where household growth is expected to happen from 2016 to 2025. It follows a very clear historical trend of Americans moving from cold places to warmer/hot places.

For the full presentation, click here.

Matthew Townsend of Bloomberg recently published an interesting article talking about the dominance of Amazon.com (and online shopping in general); the shift towards experiences over stuff; and the languishing brick-and-mortar brands that keep saying it’s the macroeconomy, rather their product/approach, which is causing sales to slump.

Here are a 3 excerpts that stood out for me:

Lurking behind the cliché is a hard truth these executives are eager to avoid. “All this pleading that the consumer isn’t spending is an excuse, largely from management teams whose product is less relevant,” Kernan said. “The consumer is actually driving the U.S. economy, so it’s a little ridiculous when we hear the excuse of the macro environment is not good.”

Another hurdle that isn’t going away is the shift to increased spending on experiences such as travel and classes, which make for much better posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. “Social media has really fostered a have-done environment, which is not what retailers sell,” Perkins said.

One characteristic of these struggling brick-and-mortar chains has been direct competition with Amazon. If they don’t go head-to-head with the online giant, they rely heavily on people visiting shopping centers anchored by retailers that do, such as ailing department-store chains Macy’s and Sears. One measure of store visits in the U.S. paints a dire picture, with only a dozen positive weeks over the past two years.

According to Bloomberg, 55% of online product searches start at Amazon.com. And while online sales in 2016 have only accounted for 11% of all (U.S.) retail revenue, it has represented 54% of all growth! That’s a big number, especially when you think about what that will mean over time.

Talking about the growth and threat of online shopping has become a boring truism. I know that. But are retail executives taking it seriously? The Bloomberg article gives you the sense that many are not – or at least they’re not publicly acknowledging it.

When I look around my place right now and think about where I bought each item – everything from the shoes at my door to the protein powder in my cupboard – it’s pretty amazing to think about how much I now buy online. And I’m sure that many of you are the same.

Groceries aside, I’m probably 85-90% online. What about you?

Using anonymized credit and debit card data from over 54 million Chase customers across the US, City Observatory recently published a chart showing the percentage of retail sales that goes to “small businesses” in 15 US cities.

This is based on proprietary data (2015) from JPMorgan Chase and is surely not perfect. But it’s still an interesting approximation.

At the top of the list is New York with 36% of all retail sales going to small businesses. And at the bottom of the list – keep in mind that this list only has 15 cities – is Columbus with 23% of retail sales.

One of the overarching findings was that urban centers tend to see 10-15% more retail sales going to small and medium sized businesses compared to the suburbs.

Intuitively, this makes sense to me. Space is a precious commodity in urban centers and that may naturally privilege the small operator. There’s also the question of consumer preference among urbanites.

If you’re interested, you can download the full report from JPMorgan Chase, here.