Retail Is NOT Dead, BAD Retail is Dead – Retail Renaissance And Grocery Resilience
Retail has been put through the ringer multiple times over the last decade, and has proven resilient. First the sector began to lag other property types in 2010 due to the global financial crisis, then by 2012 the fear of e-commerce’s impact on brick-and-mortar (the so-called “Retail Apocalypse”) continued the trend, and most recently, COVID-19 unsuccessfully took its swipe at retail. Darwin’s adapt or perish theory of evolution by natural selection of organisms is apropos to the retail sector. Retailers that have adapted and evolved with changing consumer behavior have been more resilient and more likely to succeed, while retailers that remained stagnant have been less resilient and more likely to fail. An abbreviated history of the retail sector (outlined below) is emblematic of the evolve-or-perish dichotomy.
