You would think that the demise of one competitor in an industry would leave the remaining companies in a better position – that, for example, Borders’ bankrupty would be good news for Barnes and Noble, or the collapse of Circuit City would strengthen Best Buy. But that’s not what’s happened in these cases – Barnes and Noble continues to struggle to transfer its once-mighty earnings potential to the Nook digital reader, and Best Buy’s CEO has resigned entirely rather than face continued declining sales reports.
It’s clear that there is something deeper going on when an entire sector is failing, and there’s no doubt that “failing” is not too strong a word to apply to the current state of retail – the sector has lost almost a million jobs from 2000 to 2010.
Part of this can no doubt be blamed on the recession, but consumer spending makes up the vast bulk of North American economic activity, representing well over 60% of economic activity in both the United States and Canada, and signs indicate that consumer spending continues to increase. Clearly, then, the market isn’t simply disappearing. So where is it going?
If you’ve been keeping up with the news – or if you read the title of this post – you already know the answer. Digital retailing is not the wave of the future – it’s the wave of this very minute, and it’s on its way to becoming a tidal wave. Take a look at Amazon, in many ways the poster child of the digital retail revolution. Total sales grew forty percent in 2010, going from about 24 billion dollars to over 30 billion dollars in sales in one year. But it’s not just Amazon; North American e-commerce as a whole reached 170 billion dollars in 2010.
It’s only a matter of time before online business is the primary driver of consumer spending, and right now is just the beginning of that shift. If you have the means and the method for building a compelling, online business, there’s no time like the present to position yourself to go along for the ride. And as these businesses become increasingly viable and profitable in the ongoing digital transformation, you’ll come to see just how the rules have changed; opportunities abound for ambitious entrepreneurs to seize their own personal, independent earnings.
