Contemporary Retailing

As I get older, retired, and transformed to an empty-nester, not only do I need very little but much of what I already have is surplus.  Need for dress clothing minimal.  Need for food less than I purchase, as my scale recently confirms.  Yard care contracted out.  Don't know how to use the electronics that I already have.  At one time I liked to putter around the stores to see what's there, or during Covid peaks, as an excuse to put myself someplace other than My Space.  More recently, I shop for groceries, keep up with medical maintenance, and get what I need for the personal pleasure of gardening.  When I exchanged seasonal clothing, I made note of a few replacement items, knew where to get them, and got them.

Partly to find a cooled place in devastating heat, partly to get me out of the house, I gave myself tours of some shopping centers, a regional anchor mall, a local Farmer's Market that rents space to small independent merchants, and two general merchandise places nearby that I used to tour and usually found a thing or two that I didn't really need but deceived myself into thinking I wanted.  Not at all as I remembered the mall and discount department stores, Farmer's Market much intact.

At the mall, once the modern Main Street gathering place that had to put limits on teenage access, traffic was pretty minimal.  Some stores in prime shopping time had entrance barriers, either about to be closed by their parent franchises or unable to find enough sales clerks.  How many mattresses can they really sell?  How many jewelry stores does it take to make all unprofitable?  Macy's bunched their clothing by brand.  I don't shop for brand.  If I need a shirt, show me all the shirts, like Amazon and Walmart do.  Only the Apple Store had significant interest, and even there much less than what I remember.  As I popped into a few places, the clerks, mostly school age kids funding their degrees or their cars a few bucks at a time, seemed eager to greet anyone, even somebody like me that might be of their grandfather's generation with little interest in style.  Most of the hallway kiosks had been abandoned.  There's not enough massages or cracked screen demand to justify the mall's fees.  If I really need anything, or even want anything that I don't need, Amazon is a much more efficient way to explore.  Now that covid has kept us home, we don't need to spend money to impress anyone with our style or hint at how much discretionary money we have.

It's hard to demote places like Ross Dress for Less or Big Lots.  I nearly always find a baseball cap or kitchen gizmo or discounted snack that I shouldn't be allowed to eat, which I purchase.  Not this time.  Inventory diversity has largely tanked.  Ross still economical, Big Lots not at all.  Even the Farmer's Market, dependent on niche presence, has lost traffic.  I assume the Spanish-speaking people will seek out the Hispanic market, and I'm a sucker for the two Chinese stores that sell discounted kitchenware and tools.  I found just the right sunglasses to slip over my glasses and bought two clamps to do a home project.  I cannot imagine the very attractive Western store really selling those ten gallon hats and cowboy boots and sterling belt buckles to the mostly lower income people who stroll by.  I just don't see any of these things anywhere in the places I frequent, so the store must be a display for a mail or internet commerce presence.  Price of pizza slices went up above what I was willing to pay.  Other places with food somehow do not display a health inspector's report.

Both at the high end and at the low end, stores are less of a destination than they once were.  Though I don't need or want anything, there probably are still people who do.  Just not those things from those sources.