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Ebay is ramping up their advertising huge!
 

I see it everywhere in Sydney, all the bus signs, all over the place. It's crazy!
The advertisements are all about getting brand new stuff without the retail prices. "Cheeky you" I sell used crap. It frightens me. :eek:

Everything is going online, soon retail store's will be a thing of the past.

The expression that has always impressed me is 'clicks & bricks'. Customers find it on the net and then look and buy in the stores. Maybe that will evolve into 'clicks, bricks & clicks'.
Find it on the net, look at it in store, then go back on the net to buy it.

The high streets are already empty because of Tesco et al, if this scenario takes off we might as well turn all the shops into houses and just have our money paid straight to the supermarkets.

Evolution is not always a good thing but as we all operate on line maybe we should just embrace it. .:pop2:

Tesco et al? What is that?

Sorry - a UK thing. Over here we have a group of supermarkets that are determined to decide what we eat, what we wear, where we shop and just about anything else you can think of. The biggest is Tesco (named after the founders wife Tessa Cohen) We then have - in no particular order - Sainsburys, Morrisons, Waitrose, Co-operative - thus Tesco et al.

As a farmers wife I hate the bl**dy lot of them! I see what it does to our prices (We run a small free range egg farm)when they start playing their silly games. .:mad:

What is Waitrose named after?

The founder of Waitrose, a man named Abe Finkelstein had in his mind to open a food emporium in Edwardian London but was never able to find the perfect building. You have to remember Harrods had already taken the best position in Knightsbridge.

His partner in the new enterprise was his mistress (by whom he went on to have 7 children) a lady by the name of Rosie Mulholland. A lady who came from County Cork.

Miss Mulholland was charged with the task of finding suitable premises and after much searching she located premises in the Bayswater area of London and arranged for Abe Finkelstein to view it.

On the visit to view the premises Abe Finkelstein stated that it was no good what so ever and he chastised Miss Mulholland for wasting his time.

She stormed off in a huff, and realising he had over stepped the mark he went after her. Trying to catch her up he was passing what he realised would be the perfect property for their new enterprise.

He called out to her "Wait Rose - this is it"

And the rest as they say, is history. .:doh::yar:

retail store's well always be around cause people who got money will pay retail price cause its not that they dont want to save money its cause they can get it right then as to waiting 3-5 days online for shipping. Unless u can buy something online and have it appear right before you instantly then i dout retails stores will be a thing of the past.

But the high street is changing - in fact it already has. Here in the UK we have more and more shops becoming charity shops, estate agents, lawyers etc.

While there will always be a demand for shops the supermarkets are taking more and more of that business to their out of town or edge of town locations.

The business that is left for the independant trader will get to the point where it will be insufficient to pay the bills.

Ebay already takes a large part of the retail spend - and that is only one online venue. If I had a town centre outlet I think I would be worried

Very nice story write-up.

Granted, our cultures COULD be different....

But I don't see local retail disappearing. Shopping is a social thing for a lot of people. And it can be hard to buy clothing online.

I was a shocker at first for retail business (Usa)

I think its met its middle ground. Online is still popular, Retail has evolved to meet the decline. The only thing that is hurting is books.

Very true, recently in Sydney a popular book store chain just closed many of its stores.

Books are a natural for selling online. How many books can any store carry? Sure, any store can stock the best sellers, but how may will have the niche books that people want? My first online purchases were books.

I think that is why Amazon started with books. It just made the most sense.

DVD rentals and purchases are also a no-brainer. I'm sure that Wal-Mart is selling thousands of the new Harry Potter DVD's every single day. But for the less popular titles and older stuff, it is difficult to find offline. And Blockbuster is on life support.

But other things work better offline. I like to try clothes on first, to make sure they fit right. You can't really do that online. And decorative items can be hard to envision from an online picture. It could easily end up larger or smaller than you originally thought.

And, although I'm ashamed to admit it, I can STILL spend a couple of hours browsing at Best Buy. If I find something I like, and the price seems good, I usually buy it there. But if the price seems high, I might look around online first. It all depends.

But I'd hate to live in a world where EVERYTHING was online. There is something that would be lost. And I think a lot of people feel the same way.

Here in the UK people are always moaning about the little shops closing down. We feel it because a lot of them have been my husbands customers - but the people who moan the most are the ones who take their business to the supermarkets.

The people who do their shopping on line will probably be the first to moan when the bricks and morter stores close down.

The world is changing and it can not be stopped. We are not Luddites and we are going to have to learn to live with it.:noidea: