Is e-commerce killing our traditional stores?

A few weeks ago, another so-called traditional store closed in Basel. I have great sympathy for long-standing company histories and the traditions associated with them. It’s regrettable when a business like this closes, especially as jobs are always lost. But also because we humans simply love such stories: A company that is 150 years old! Wow!

The obituarists are also quickly on hand to vent their frustration about the lost business. There is talk of the evil Internet, evil e-commerce, lost values, the incredibly tough economy and shopping tourism, and some people are tempted to describe our society as lost and on the wrong track.

It is the duty of every company to continuously realign itself with the customer.

Honestly, I’m sick of hearing the whining. It demonstrates a completely wrong understanding of long-term entrepreneurial activity and an inability to deal with change. In the above-mentioned case, I find it particularly bad: the management duo even get carried away and give an interview in the local newspaper with all kinds of flimsy excuses. The arguments could not be more misguided. My favorite argument:

Customers are increasingly buying online
The standard argument of the old economy to explain why their sales are stagnating or declining. And yes, of course more and more customers are buying online. This is because it is easier, because it is faster, because it is more convenient, because it has a much larger product selection and yes, because it is also cheaper in some cases. But what is presented here as an inevitable threat is (or was) in fact one of the greatest opportunities of recent years. Established companies already had the best starting position to enter eCommerce at the right time. However, as they are not geared towards the customer, they have not noticed that customers are slowly but steadily changing their shopping behavior. As a result, the unchanged range of products and services systematically missed out on the changed demand.

To pretend that you can’t do anything about it now is simply laughable. Every child understands the relationship between supply and demand. And it is one of the cornerstones of our social concept.

Instead, people should have simply stood up and said openly and honestly: We didn’t make it. We paid too little attention to market developments and didn’t adapt our offering accordingly. That’s why customers are no longer buying at the same rate, that’s why our finances are no longer right. And we have neither the desire nor the skills to restructure the company.

Surviving two wars and Duttweiler’s retail revolution
The company has survived two wars, the introduction of electricity, transportation as we know it and Dutti’s retail revolution, but it can’t master the digital revolution? I don’t understand it. All the more so as we now have much more data on markets and customers.

I do have one explanation: perhaps it’s simply that the leadership of the old economy has had far too golden a time. After the war, there were 60 years of virtually unchecked demand and there was no need to make any major adjustments in certain areas. Things simply ran smoothly. Anyone who was socialized during this time, and I understand that, is actually surprised by changes today.

Others show that change offers opportunities
In this respect, their view is even correct. However, impressive examples in my immediate environment show that things can also work quite differently. For example, the hardware store, which over the years mutated into a household goods store and then more of a home accessories store with an embedded catering section. Without any online presence and not on Bahnhofstrasse.

Or the music store that started out as a start-up and simply refused to accept the inefficient and incrusted existing retail channels and therefore imported in parallel, becoming the market leader in Switzerland. Online, but also with very real large stores.

What they have in common is that they are not resting on their laurels and have understood that customers and markets are on the move and therefore the providers must be too. It’s really as simple as that.

On the Kost Sport website, the following sentence can be found in the history: “Leonhard Kost, the founder of the business, was obviously constantly on the lookout for new market niches.” If the company had been able to maintain this spirit, it would probably still be a strong, profitable company. Whether it would still be active in the sporting goods trade is another question, but also a less important one.