Why The Last 10 Years Were Retail’s ‘Lost Decade’

The last ten years have been the equivalent of a lost decade for retail. As Amazon has risen, traditional retailers were slow to meet the needs of digital customers and they have lost a tremendous amount of market value as a result. Somewhere along the way “omnichannel” emerged as a silver bullet that would be the key to unlocking a profitable path forward for struggling retailers. But the hard truth is that the return on the significant investment required to go omnichannel hasn’t matched the hype. And the omnichannel experience sold by the consultant class was nowhere close to how people — especially millennials — actually shop. As omnichannel began to penetrate the retail consciousness in 2010, the potential for the smartphone to transform the customer experience was still very much theoretical. The iPhone was common but not ubiquitous. The screen on the iPhone 4 was small compared to later versions, and the mobile shopping experience was less comfortable and intuitive. Despite all this, the smartphone-driven future should have pointed to the future of retail. The omnichannel model, instead, forecasted a world where customers would funnel through a variety of different channels in order to communicate and shop. But millennials don’t pick up the phone and order from a catalog, and nobody is shopping on Pinterest. Retailers got lost trying to make sure every channel worked together at the expense of innovating the only two channels that matter: mobile and the store. Read more at Business Insider.