Close your online store! Now!
A current controversy. For a special occasion.
This is the only way to gain a known advantage from the former perspective on the trading world, because then you are back in familiar territory and can deal with testing materials and negotiating with service providers.
Famous examples include the closure of the online store at Europe's best-known department store(KaDeWe), after years of mismanagement with not a single year of profitability under the well-known management at the time, or other examples such as Modepark Röther, which first closed its own online store, then bought Ahlers AG with brands such as Pierre Cardin and Baldessarini and was the first retailer to close its online store there too. After the recent purchase of Adler Modemärkte by Röther, I don't even need a high school diploma to see what will happen to Adler's online store. My guess: this store will no longer be available online before August 15. Any further delay would really be inconsistent. Other examples of digital incompetence: mytoys.de or tedi.de.
Why these measures?
Quite simply: the relevance of the generation with the highest purchasing power in the near future (Z) and the next generation (Alpha) is not considered here, let alone welcomed. All the findings from BCG, Google and Gartner on seamless and future-oriented omnichannel experiences, customer journeys and customer experience are humbug. Even more so the individual important analyses of the leading heads of this dubious eCommerce squad such as Alexander Graf or Stefan Wenzel do not seem true, important or even comprehensible.
We should also quickly clear up the reports on the subject of digitalization in Germany from the experienced pen of Sascha Pallenberg, for example, and get back to good old-fashioned over-the-counter retail. When Stepstone CEO Sebastian Dettmers talks about the lack of workers (i.e. the inability to find "cheap" staff for retail jobs etc. in the future) and Jochen Krisch has been talking about dying city centers for years, we can only look at the new prophets of the offline world, who will certainly have strategic planning ready for this and will create experience centers in city centers and also have solutions at hand for untraceable retail staff.
No more admission?
How many closed retail doors can still serve as shelters for the homeless? How many more one-euro and barber stores are to replace the advice trade in the city center? How many more tons of airplane merchandise should spill over from Temu- and Shein-land into Europe in order to understand that the retreat into the dinosaur status of the corner shop will no longer work?
And don't say later that nobody informed you in advance. I would be happy to name a good store fitter who has also made a name for himself with really professional coffee corners, because that's what we as customers really want...
Which way to the future?
So what can we do to prevent the current target group from "breaking away" until we have dealt with digitalization? Well, all the experts mentioned above could certainly help here. Omnichannel technology also helps, but is not the solution. The solution is for retailers to realize that the future exists and cannot be prevented, but should be embraced.
PS: For successful case studies of German companies with an omnichannel landscape, please send me a DM via Linkedin.