Bankrupt physical retail stores take over the spaces at lower cost and sell the most popular wares on your retail website in the physical stores. Oh, and use them as a pick-up location to ease your shipping costs. One can imagine the fine essay presented to Jeff Bezos on the subject. One can imagine his fine-lipped smile as he read it. I confess I’d never visited any of them, so I thought I’d find one, see what it was like and wonder why it had all gone wrong. I wandered into a Bay Area four-star store on a Saturday, and the effect wasn’t entirely deserving of many stars at all. It was largely empty of people but still felt cluttered, jumbled up and more confused than a squirrel trying to read a book. Children’s toys were huddled next to business books. Cookware struggled for space next to office products. Do I really want to go to a physical store to discover that other people in the Bay Area are buying All-Clad skillets? Do I need an All-Clad skillet? Do I need to be like other people in the Bay Area? And, please, did I miss something? Is TikTok the place to get book recommendations? I ended up seeing a cutting board for $45. I suddenly remembered we needed one, as ours had begun to split from all my inexpert chopping. So I picked it up and took it to the counter. The very nice saleswoman charged me a mere $29 for it. I’m not really sure why. “Did this place used to be busy?” I asked. “It was at Christmas,” she said. “Everyone was looking for last-minute gifts.” I asked when the store was closing. “The 19th,” she said. “We didn’t get much notice.” I sense your surprise. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would actively seek out one of the four-star stores, which seemed to be based on an entirely flimsy idea: that people would want to see four-starred products in person. Out of some sort of fascination, you understand. I can’t say that the company has done anything to incite me to visit a Whole Foods since it bought it. Just as I can’t say, it did anything to make me feel a four-star store was anything but a one-star experience.
