By all accounts, 2016's "Black Friday" was a success, surpassing $3 billion in sales for the first time in history. That might be welcome news for a retail industry that is now unambiguously in crisis, but most of the record spending was done online.
That's just another nail in the coffin for an industry that's seen a raft of bankruptcies lately, with mall-based fixtures like Sports Authority, RadioShack, Aéropostale, American Apparel, and PacSun all going belly-up.
I'm not trying to spoil anyone's festive mood, but it's my job to call it as I see it: This trend for these traditional retailers points straight down. No matter how much you personally spend this shopping season (and I do hope you get some good deals), the explosion of ecommerce, along with weak and/or increasingly selective consumers, makes traditional retailers' destruction inevitable.
But hardly anyone is falling faster or harder than this turkey, which means we have to move quickly...
No One Can Stop the Collapse This Man Started
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Prominent money manager. Has built top-ranked credit and hedge funds, managed billions for institutional and high-net-worth clients. 29-year career.
SEARS stores look like 'they forgot to turn off the Lights'…..compared to MACY'S
This illustrates a core problem with the Sears enterprise. That someone even compares Macy's with Sears demonstrates a core disconnect between a company and it's [primarily former] customers. To me, Sears never carved out a new identity for themselves after the 700-page-catalog days. They were too slow to move said catalog to the internet and it was all downhill from there.