If Video killed the Radio Star, what is killing the mall?

I sometimes think our generation both created and now is destroying the shopping mall. I mean, I know they pre-date GenX, but check this quote:

“Teen retail stores are down a full 31 percent according to Bloomberg. Unless teenagers now feel a collective urge to put down their smart phones and do something as heavily nostalgic as shopping in a mall — which, by the way, is intensely 1985 — it might be irreversible.”

The rest of Hepburn’s Is this the Death of Retail? has good points… but I keep coming back to the way Regan’s America convinced a generation to “hang out at the mall” — it was intense, focused, consumer behavior and exactly what “the economy” needed.

I completely blame that mid-80s era for my obsession with tech, gadgets, consumer culture, and general accumulation of goods. The Boomers were at the forefront but we were caught in the wake, buying music, movies, overpriced designer denim, and whatever it took to look like our favourite pop stars.

Then cries started about the middle class dying — wages weren’t increasing in line with the cost of living so we were buying less. But I think it started before then. I think all that STUFF became overwhelming. We were stuck in houses full of things we had nowhere to put. We all felt trapped and spent the last part of the 20th century obsessing over simplifying, downsizing, and focusing on our spiritual and emotional well being. There was a shift from tourism to travel — people wanted experiences rather than souvenirs.

And in the middle of it all there was terrorism that made people want to stay indoors, a financial meltdown that disposed with many households’ disposable income, and the internet that gave everyone the means to do things from their living room that used to be done at the mall. The battle cry of, “customers want convenience” launched thousands of online marketplaces selling everything that could be shipped from warehouse to doorstep, cutting prices by cutting out the sales floor.

And who is doing most of the shopping online? People my age and just slightly younger. The latter part of GenX who shopped as a leisure activity in the 80s, making the Mall into a destination, is now shopping online.

We’ve watched chain after chain fall as consumers turn to online purchasing — using the storefront to kick the tires then letting someone else carry the packages to their door. I think malls can still survive, with a greater emphasis on service and variety, but the margins are already razor thin and only truly flexible and remarkable retail outlets are going to make the next cut. The dinosaurs will become extinct as they fail to adapt.