Recent retail sales data shows that Apple is dominating in terms of dollars earned per square footage of retail space with a whopping 6,050 for the fiscal year that ended in June. This beating out Tiffany & Co for the most productive retail chain. Coming in third was a company that sells yoga clothes at ten was Walmart which was ranked in the top ten in large part because of high volume in it's grocery department.
These numbers coupled with the fact that Amazon's kindle sales are out pacing traditional book sales by a significant margin. The news this weekend that DC comics is beginning to make it's titles available for digital sale are harbingers of the end of retail as we have known it.
The desire for material goods is the same as the desire to see Madonna naked, they are both things everyone did in the 80's but now are only done by individuals so out of touch that they think Madonna is still relevant (this demographic may only include Madonna at this point). The change has come out the desire for convenience. At first it was simply ordering from Amazon and the painstaking waiting of three to five business days for stuff to arrive (also worrying about the UPS driver sleeping with your spouse) now all that has given way to the instant gratification of having whatever you want down loaded right on to you WiFi enabled device.
What all this means is that we are witnessing a significant shrinking of how people live. I reminded of the George Carlin routine in which he talks about a house is just a place where you keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. Now that most of our stuff is being kept in cyber space it means that we as people need less space. In addition to the fact that we need less space for our stuff to the fact that the birthrate is way down in the United States and that people are having their first children much later in life, the only demographic where the birthrate actually went up was in women between 35 and 45, means that there are smaller families which means again less space.
The days of the suburban home, two and a half kids, white picket fence, dog and multiple automobiles are past us. We are living smaller, cheaper and yes better than we were. Incomes may go down but the cost of living is also going down. A person can live better today on 30,000 dollars a year than they could have 10 years ago because what they need to be fulfilled costs less.
It might not be the world you thought you were going to get but I'll tell you what it is actually better. So relax turn on your tablet, make a single cup of coffee with your Keurig, watch last night's Daily Show on Hulu and IM me maybe?
No comments:
Post a Comment