The Death of the Department Store

'American department stores, once all-powerful shopping meccas that anchored malls and Main Streets across the country, have been dealt blow after blow in the past decade. J.C. Penney and Sears were upended by hedge funds. Macy’s has been closing stores and cutting corporate staff. Barneys New York filed for bankruptcy last year.' - New York Times article.

I have given some thought on this, how this pandemic has fundamentally changed our way of life. Our ability to take advantage of it, to seek opportunities out of crises. It may prove to be crucial as we ease our way into the new normal. 

The piece specifically looked at the struggles department stores have faced over the past decade. With online shopping taking over, less people are visiting local malls for their everyday goods. A slow but certain decline has put department stores in difficult spots, and some facing bankruptcy. Following that trend, it is not difficult to make out malls' future trajectory. 

This begs the question - Is there a future for repurposed malls at all?

Although consumer behaviours have shifted over the years, mall remains a social hub for local communities to come together. 

Diminished value through advent of online shopping, malls still have a discernible advantage. 

Issue with malls have been their inability to evolve or lack thereof. Evolve in terms of identifying a niche market specific to the local market and interest. Niche market such as medically integrated ‘malls’, experience based malls.

This idea revolves around the concept that we as communities have developed more peculiar needs as humanity advance. The era of wholesale selling are long gone. Viewing human history on a holistic timeline, with globalisation and relative 'peacetime' for the past two decades, we are flushed with luxury goods on every level. Henceforth, long gone are the days where consumers are happy to take anything and everything off the market. 

Having said that, malls are not at all a lost cause. They are strategically located in areas where most business could only dream of. Their ability to transform their purpose and satisfy the local community’s need would be the determining factor on whether they’d survive this wave of wholesale Darwinism.