This Saturday* morning as I waited 10 minutes to buy my FT at the sole operational checkout in my local WHSmith, while the operator keyed in multiple Lotto-vouchers, allowing a queue to form and grow increasingly restless, I began to think about the nature of the online threat to Bricks & Mortar retailing.
I had to that point accepted that effective fulfilment of an infinite online assortment (300m items available on Amazon) posed the real online threat to traditional retailing. In other words, with 80% of sales coming from 20% of the 50,000 SKUs in a Tesco branch and the remaining 40,000 SKU-tail slowly soaking up profits, all adds up to a no-contest fight for our biggest retailer...
As I continued to wait 'inline' in WHS, I suddenly realised that online retailing provides queueless shopping, making us increasingly intolerant of even the 3-man queue in Tesco that triggers the opening of another checkout... And there is no way that a traditional mult can reduce that trigger-quantity without jeopardising profitability...
Anyway, following that breakthrough insight, I gave up on WHS, replaced my FT on the rack, walked over to the Tesco superstore, picked up a new FT, checked out and was on my way home in two minutes on a Saturday, mid-morning (!), that time when Tesco used to be too crowded and busy to even contemplate a shopping trip...
* Saturday being the new Sunday in newspaper reading terms...(here)
I had to that point accepted that effective fulfilment of an infinite online assortment (300m items available on Amazon) posed the real online threat to traditional retailing. In other words, with 80% of sales coming from 20% of the 50,000 SKUs in a Tesco branch and the remaining 40,000 SKU-tail slowly soaking up profits, all adds up to a no-contest fight for our biggest retailer...
As I continued to wait 'inline' in WHS, I suddenly realised that online retailing provides queueless shopping, making us increasingly intolerant of even the 3-man queue in Tesco that triggers the opening of another checkout... And there is no way that a traditional mult can reduce that trigger-quantity without jeopardising profitability...
Anyway, following that breakthrough insight, I gave up on WHS, replaced my FT on the rack, walked over to the Tesco superstore, picked up a new FT, checked out and was on my way home in two minutes on a Saturday, mid-morning (!), that time when Tesco used to be too crowded and busy to even contemplate a shopping trip...
* Saturday being the new Sunday in newspaper reading terms...(here)
