Apple retail head Ahrendts talks demise of retail, 'human business' at Cannes Lions

She is absolutely right!
People like my Mom & Pop really don’t like online shopping.
They want to use a product before buying one. That’s why I trust Craigslist more than eBay or Amazon.

racerhomie3 said:

She is absolutely right!
People like my Mom & Pop really don’t like online shopping.
They want to use a product before buying one. That’s why I trust Craigslist more than eBay or Amazon.

There are certain things I like buying online because I know exactly what I'm getting and then there are things that I want to see in person before buying. Clothes are a good example. All places have different sizes so a medium in one store is different from another store where maybe you need a small, or a large in that store. This is annoying when shopping online because obviously you can't try it on before buying and I don't want to screw around with returning items. Shoes are another thing for the same reason. Also, some things don't look the same in person as they do online as you're either looking at a rendering of the item(s), or sometimes its just a shitty photo someone took.

I think retail still has a valid presence and if stores like JCP, Macy's, Target, etc can just get their act together and keep up with the times they'll be alright in the long run. The weakest links will die off such as Sears, BonTon, Toys R Us, maybe even JCP.

And, yes depending what it is, I like using the product before buying it. Again, I don't want to deal with returning something even as easy as it is with places like Amazon.

On the Apple Retail front...I hope Apple continues to expand their existing stores meaning, moving their stores into larger spaces. They're getting a little too crowded and now they've started this thing where they line people up that are waiting for the Genius Bar around IN FRONT of all of the products. So when go in, everyone is standing in front of everything around the outside walls (which is where all of the Macs are in my local Apple Store) so I can't use anything. It's incredibly annoying and IMO, totally defeats the purpose of the store. Sometimes I think Apple should just have a store next to the retail store that is just for Genius Bar appointments. Probably not the most financially sound idea, but it would at least eliminate the over crowdedness of their stores. Apple has the exact opposite issue of most other retail stores today and it needs to figure out how to solve it. Sometimes it gets to the point where its not even worth going in.

I think she's a great addition to the Apple team. The look of the stores gets better and better. I love the use of trees and plants inside the store. 

Best

Some of the unfortunate retail deaths are because of greed on the part of investor groups. This is what happened to Toys R Us. They were attractive because they were very profitable and well run, but severely undervalued which got them snapped up by an investor group. The group then repackaged them and took out massive loans to extract the hidden value and saddled the company with tons of debt and unmanageable rates. They when from profitable to losing money as soon as these notes became due. Even bankruptcy couldn’t save them because the debt was unserviceable.