TREND 2025: Retail’s Big Split: what small town retailers can do now

Remember the Retail Apocalypse around 2017? In a media interview this week, I brought up that it was actually Retail’s Big Split, not an apocalypse, and it’s ongoing. The reporter asked me to explain, so here’s my update for today’s retail landscape.   “Everything gigantic in American life is about to get smaller or die.” […]

Remember the Retail Apocalypse around 2017? In a media interview this week, I brought up that it was actually Retail’s Big Split, not an apocalypse, and it’s ongoing. The reporter asked me to explain, so here’s my update for today’s retail landscape.

 

“Everything gigantic in American life is about to get smaller or die.” James Kunstler wrote in 2013. He said big box retailers were on the brink of scale implosion, and that “every element of economic reality is now poised to squash them.” It was a provocative stance for 2013, and I’ve been monitoring small retail trends at least as long.

By 2017, it seemed like we went over the brink. Every week brought another story of big retail jobs lost, the shuttering of stores, and the financial losses at big retailers.

You might think small retailers, especially small town retailers, don’t stand a chance. But that’s not true. 

There are a lot of news stories that point to eCommerce as the cause of big in-person retail’s decline and also as its replacement. Today, you don’t run to the big box store for regular items like paper towels or laundry soap. You just tell your voice assistant to order it online. Even more automated, you’ve probably set up all kinds of regular items on recurring shipments that you don’t even think about. Smart refrigerators can already integrate with your voice assistant to make it easy for you to place more orders. Soon the fridge itself will notice you’re low on something and just reorder it for you. That means no chance for a big box store to capture an impulse purchase when you make a quick run to the store for those items.

It’s worth noting that online sales today only amount to 16% of all retail sales, though that has doubled since I first wrote about the Big Split in 2017. Online sales aren’t the only cause for big retail’s decline or the only replacement. We’re also purchasing less for a variety of societal and cultural reasons. See also the Buy Nothing group you belong to on Facebook, underconsumption core, and thriving interest in sustainability, secondhand and vintage shops. But that still leaves a lot o