High Street Retail Is Dead. Long Live High Street Retail.

The advent of e-commerce and the global rise of internet penetration made many people create post-apocalyptic scenarios about abandoned commercial high streets and eerily empty shops. The headlines are often peppered with stories regarding the death of the main commercial streets — indeed, retailers’ store sales plummeted last Christmas compared to Christmas 2014 due to the rise of online shopping. According to Anil Gandharve, Sales Head of Europe at Mindtree, a technology services company, online stores might be gaining market share from the high street shops since their invention, however, that’s hardly a reason to worry. “Physical stores are now more than stores — they are bridges between the consumers and brands,” he said. See more at Forbes.