“It’s fashionable these days to pronounce the death of the physical world. The tech press reads like an obituary page—gold killed by Bitcoin, the office killed by Zoom, reality itself killed by the metaverse. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, many believe the rise of Amazon and a host of wildly popular direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands has spelled the end of retail, too. The narrative is infectious and the prognosis is inevitably bleak. But when it comes to retail, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s not hard to see how this idea took hold. Walk around any major downtown area from San Francisco to New York and you’ll find plenty of shuttered storefronts with signs in the window thanking loyal customers for years of business. Many people assume this is the fallout from D2C competition or savvy businesses moving online to save themselves. While this is undoubtedly part of the explanation, it’s hardly the full picture.”