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“Retail bricks-and-mortar will really begin to come into its own from what I call the shadows,” says Gerald S. Divaris, chairman/CEO of real estate brokerage firm Divaris Real Estate Inc., based in Virginia Beach, Va.
There’s been anxiety on the part of traditional retailers that online retail was going to “really adversely impact their business,” Divaris notes.
“But the truth of the matter is, retail is a vehicle of conveying manufactured products that the consumers want through various channels of distribution,” he says. Online is one channel and bricks-and-mortar is another. Catalogs and direct sales are other channels. Retailers that can harness all of those various channels of distribution successfully are the ones that will win out in the end, Divaris says.
“We’ve seen how many have succeeded in doing that—guys like Target, Best Buy, Kohl’s, Williams-Sonoma,” he notes. “Those retailers that haven’t been able to harness that concept—the faltering Sears and Toys ‘R’ Us of the world—are likely to disappear over the next 12 to 24 months. We will see a strengthening of the good retailers and the elimination of those that are weak.”
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