A report in the Sydney Morning Herald shows that retail centres in Australia are starting to feel the effects of online shopping in a big way. The report by one of the operators of 84 centres including Sydney and Melbourne says they are turning over more and more space to cafes, restaurants, hairdressers and beauty salons to keep the tills ringing.
Floor space for women’s clothes tenants is down 13% while space for food outlets and restaurants had grown 17 per cent and space for services such as hairdressing grew 44 percent.
Amazon is just about to launch in a big way in Australia, and the large retailers seem very worried about the impact. Some would argue they have had many years to prepare and have simply ignored the wishes of the online consumer in Australia.
For the parts of the world where Amazon (and other forms of online shopping) has a stronghold, it may mean that as in Australia, retail spaces morph into service centres for “things you can’t do online”.
Just another example of digital disruption at play.