With e-commerce’s stake in U.S. retail at less than 10 percent, suggestions of a “retail apocalypse” of brick-and-mortar stores is greatly exaggerated, panelists said during a ULI North Texas event on the retail sector. Still, panelists at an event in Dallas said the industry has to find new ways to reinvent itself and connect with customers in order to thrive.
“What we did . . . ten years ago doesn’t work anymore,” said Valerie Richardson, vice president of real estate for the Container Store Inc. “We are in a tectonic-plate shift in our industry. For those of us with longstanding brands, it’s critical that we go deep into our customer base and understand what our customer needs and respond to that appropriately.”
https://urbanland.uli.org/news/retailers-focusing-customer-experience-eye-e-commerce/