Clearly, We Can't Be Surprised. Right?

I've always marveled at the statistic conveyed by this graphic. The mere fact that we are about 7x higher than the next closest nation in terms of retail square footage per American is astounding. We Americans love our retail, we demand new concepts, new more immersive experiences, new fashion brands and something to pique our interests. We are bored easily and highly-fickle consumers. I mean, can anyone be surprised by the article in the Wall Street Journal today that declared "Retailers Brace For Major Change" Retail has long been homogenized, pasteurized and any other word with the -ize suffix you can imagine. The malls have sprawled with concepts that cater to Boomer men, Boomer women, Millenial Goths, Millenial Skateboarders, tech-hungry geeks, power-hungry business people and everyone in between. The difference between a Kohl's Sunday ad and a Sears' Sunday ad is only in the size of the font and the predictable model poses perperated by some hack art director.

I mean, are we really surprised that the weakest retailers that did nothing to differentiate except proclaim sales like "Lowest Prices of the Season", "Stock Up And Save" or my personal fave The BOGO. All these sprawling, faceless retailers have done is force mediocrity and leave no room for creativity. But you know what? You know who is to blame for that vanilla, retail horror? You. Me and Us. That's right, we the consumer are at fault for not rewarding retailers for creativity. We are a vanilla culture that has forced their hand in making sure we buy boring shit.

Also, I've always thought that Wall Street and subsequently the CEO's of the retailers always made inflated projections around the holiday season and I can't remember one time in the recent history where people were actually happy with the sales that did occur. Someone was always bummed out about something. It  is either sales that is the depressing news or because of deep discounting, their margin.

I think that this retail natural selection is healthy. Yes, I am bummed that people will lose their jobs up and down the supply chain - but maybe this will teach us a lesson about guns and butter, again. Or, maybe we will learn that the differentiated will survive and resist the temptation to paste the front of ads with big yellow letters (yellow is the official color of the retail sale) 300% off everytime we have something to say. The consumer is over it. I'm over it.