Just as the economy begins to recover, many retailers are buying more merchandise, filling their warehouses and seeing consumers walk through the doors once again spending and buying. It’s all good, right? Well, yes and no, we’ve got some more innovative disruptions on the home front, and brick-and-mortar businesses are going to take another big hit. Let me explain.

Have you considered that everyone runs with a smartphone or an iPad? Ask yourself as a retailer what they are looking for while inside your store. Well, you might be surprised that they are checking their prices and browsing online to find similar products at a lower cost. Worse, some of the companies that sell online don’t charge sales tax so they already charge your physical store 5-10% depending on where your store is located, often this more than covers the costs. shipping.

Also, consider if you want your cost structure to be much lower because, since you don’t have to have a store. Can you see how difficult this is getting? The question is; What can you as a retailer do about it? Can you turn your store into a Faraday cage where there is no way to get a Wi-Fi signal or 4G wireless frequency from outside the store? That will probably backfire and piss off your customers. The only way you will compete is to lower your cost, increase volume, and offer special discounts yourself to your loyal customers who take care of their membership cards.

But still, how can you compete against Walmart? [dot] com or Amazon [dot] com if you are a smaller store with less purchasing power? Most likely you can’t. Perhaps what you need is to have an online store within your store. In other words, offer free Wi-Fi to those people who are in your store and let them through your servers. Watch where they go and let them search your own online store for items that may not be in your store, but may have been delivered to them through a third-party delivery system.

There are many ways to approach this problem, but if you don’t have a strategy, you can’t win. And meanwhile your competition is in all this. In fact, Sam’s Club now tells its customers that if they can find a lower price, even while shopping in the store, show that price at the register and they’ll match it. In other words, Sam’s Club is using this to their advantage, telling the customer that they trust they have the lowest price, that they are sure they will match any price, and that they dare you to find it cheaper elsewhere.

That’s where the competition goes, the question is; you can compete in the future of retail. In fact, I hope you will please consider all of this and think about it. If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please feel free to email me as soon as possible.