Well here are the 2016 retail sales results, as always there were winners and losers. Many large retailers posted very low single-digit earnings during last year’s holiday shopping season, while Amazon posted decent double-digit earnings. Now, I have witnessed a trend that is a bit disconcerting. During my holiday shopping this year as a consumer, I noticed that many online retailers that also had physical stores did not carry the items on the website in their store inventory. This annoys customers.

After all, if you want it right away, or like the idea of ​​shopping, or if it’s an item you really need to buy in the store because of fit or size, like clothing, you should try it. by the way if you get the story and it’s not available or they don’t have it for example i went to the sports authority and i couldn’t find any of those clip on bike shoes they don’t sell them in the store but i definitely need to try on the shoes , I didn’t want to order them, for them to come and not fit me, which means I would have to send them back and then order something else.

It turned out that he was right in thinking this because when I went to his competitor’s sports chalet, the shoes I wanted to buy did not fit my normal size, they were half as big. I didn’t notice anyone on The Sports Authority website mentioning that the sizes were half-large on that particular brand of cycling shoe. This confuses customers and makes it very annoying, something physical stores are going to find out about even if they are trying to cut costs and reduce their inventories for higher profits.

It’s almost like the problem we had with JIT or just-in-time inventory and supply chain. Since the warehouses were no longer available, things were delayed all the way to the factory, waiting for the next run of the finite capacity scheduling model at the manufacturing facility. People want what they want and they want it now, and they want the best price, if they’re not going to find a way to get it. I hope the retail industry understands this.

So, how are things going in the sector? I’ve outlined just one challenge to keeping customers happy, but there are many more when it comes to physical stores versus online retailers.

On January 12, 2017, the New York Times published an article titled; “Amazon to Add 100,000 Jobs as Traditional Retail Collapses,” by Nellson D. Schwartz and Nick Winfield. The article noted:

“The 100,000 hires it plans for the next 18 months represent a 56 percent increase on the 180,000 full-time employees in the United States it had at the end of 2016. Amazon has more than 300,000 full- and part-time employees time all over the world.

On January 17, 2017 we learned that: “The Limited Stores files for bankruptcy”, from an article in Total Retail, with another article explaining the company’s problems in the WSJ (Wall Street Journal).

The whole dichotomy we have here, and it’s clear who’s the real winner, the question is: can online retailers or dual retailers figure out how to make it work before they’re out of business? Please consider this.