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A couple days ago, I wandered down to the local Barnes and Noble to
get out of the house, see if I could prove I still exist, and to add to
the pile of research for the next story I'm writing.
Let's see. Marketing. S for Safko. The Social Media Bible, 3rd Edition.
Chapter 21, Interpersonal Tools. Yep, I'm in there, technical editor;
the words I wrote look familiar, the screenshots I took look nice, even
spelled my name right. I like it when a plan comes together.
(Disclaimer: didn't get paid to write it, don't get paid on sales of the
book, but I'm thankful for the opportunity to have it in my portfolio
of work. Call it perfectly unkept hope.)
Then I went looking for a couple favorite new titles from my Pinterest page of business books. No luck on the shelves.
Time for human interaction. I stood at the information desk playing
the may-I-help-you riff a couple times. It doesn't work as well as it
used to. Someone finally showed up from the back to assist me, and typed
in the titles I was looking for.
"Ahhhhhh. Those are print-on-demand. We can order them and have them delivered here for pickup, or you can order them online."
At that moment, the only thing I could think was: this is a tough,
tough world right now. The entire value chain is wildly disrupted, and
it's getting harder, not easier, to find and purchase goods in the
physical world. Demand is being driven online. That, paradoxically, has
put a lid on economic recovery.
 Showrooming - where a consumer visits a product in a physical store,
then shops around and buys it online, often cheaper - is on the rise.
It's creating a much more difficult environment for retailers. Borders
and Circuit City disappeared beneath the waves. Best Buy is noticeably listing to starboard. Target dropped Kindle just to try to make a point to Amazon.
We saw a lot of this coming, and it's not about just books and computers and music. All the talk during Web 1.0 was disenfranchisement,
where the middle people would disappear from transactions as more and
more things went online. This was supposed to reach into the way people
and businesses bought goods. It was very interesting to see one of these
new-marketplace companies from Web 1.0, Ariba, acquired this week by SAP.
Long term, the online shift has brought structural changes that we
didn't see coming, and the middle people who are being eliminated aren't
the ones we thought. While FedEx and UPS are in good shape supporting
all those online shipments, the US Postal Service is doomed. Swathes of
commercial real estate sit vacant, jettisoned by retailers struggling to
adapt, and there's more on the horizon as Sears and JC Penney continue
to struggle. Unemployment has swelled as many people find themselves in
the middle, including 27,000 HP associates announced this week.
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Re: We'd Recover Faster With Less Showrooming
