tired: in an Amazon world, independent retail is doomed

wired: independent retail was doomed before Amazon with the rise of mall outlet chains and “big box” stores, both Wal-Mart and “category killers” with nationally optimized supply chains; Amazon’s original debut as a bookseller was in a sector that Barnes & Noble and Borders had already transformed

galaxy brain: independent retail was already under threat from national operations like F.W. Woolworth, A&P, and Sears Roebuck at the turn of the century and in response the politically influential class of local businessmen erected an extensive regulatory apparatus – restrictions on the timing, amount, and advertising of sales and discounts; a heavily regulated shipping sector; vigorous antitrust to prevent suppliers from decisively dominating any sector; requirements for branch offices as a condition of doing business in the state; protections for an intermediary layer of wholesalers and distributors between producers and retailers; all of which mitigated the advantages of size and committed large businesses to supporting a class of local business-types throughout the areas they served rather than concentrating wealth and power in a headquarters city. Much of the heralded “deregulation” and “consumer movement” of the 1970s-80s consisted of dismantling this apparatus in the name of efficiency, lowered consumer prices being one way to increase purchasing power against a backdrop of stagflation.