Sidewalk

Brand Design + Strategy

SVA Masters in Branding Thesis

Futures of Nearness: Retail

Background

Some of the country’s most important companies were launched during times of adversity- General Electric, P&G, IBM, General Motors, and FedEx were all born in times of economic turbulence. Those who returned from World War II formed "The Greatest Generation." Square, WhatsApp, and Slack were all founded around the the financial crash of 2008. Now, as Covid-19 has spread to every corner of the world, we’re again in the midst of one of these moments of profound upheaval. In this moment, we have both the need and the opportunity to seize it to profoundly reshape the future.

How can we then use branding to reimagine a future where connection to each other and to the world at large, continues to fuel our humanity? What is the future of nearness in retail in the post-Covid world? What should we bring with us through this portal and what should we leave behind?

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

-Arundhati Roy,

The Pandemic is a Portal

See the full presentation here.

4. March 2020

Then came March 2020.

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As the country reckoned with an unprecedented health crisis, small business owners had to worry about more than just their health.

Businesses labeled as nonessential were forced to shut their doors almost overnight.

Owners scrambled to quickly adapt their businesses,

were forced to let go of employees,

or close their doors permanently.

This pandemic has exposed not only the fragility of these businesses, but in the inequality of the retail landscape.

This pandemic has been "A toxin for underdogs and a steroid for many giants."

Without a safety net, local businesses were left to wait for support and aid from organizations like the Small Business Administration.

While retail giants were thriving and improving sales by leaps and bounds. Walmart saw sales surge in its first quarter at the fastest pace in almost two decades, and Amazon saw a 26% increase in first quarter sales.

And Jeff Bezos got richer and richer, increasing his net worth by 34.6 billion dollars in just 2 months.

But while Jeff Bezos was profiting immensely during this pandemic, local businesses were unable to make ends meet. Twelve percent of small businesses are at risk of bankruptcy.

And nearly a quarter of them have considered closing their doors permanently.

This would have significant impact on the economy, because small retailers employ 11.6 million Americans.

Additionally, small retailers have significant social and economic benefits to their communities– more so than large chains.

Local retailers are more likely to buy, hire, and source, locally themselves– investing more into their communities than chain stores. 68% of local spending stays in the community, compared to 43% of spending at chain stores.

Today, we can get our goods from places both near and far, sometimes overnight.

The things we want and need are near to us within the measure of time, but not distance.

We often mistake speed for proximity.

And because of this, we have forgotten about the places that actually are near to us. The places around the corner, down the street, or a short car ride away.

These are the shops that inhabit our towns.

Our cities.

And our communities.

These shops have been struggling, because of an increasingly demanding consumer, whose expectations have been incrementally growing over the last 2 centuries.

But it wasn’t always this way. It may be hard to imagine a time when big box stores didn’t dominate the retail landscape, but long before Amazon entered our lives, it was local businesses who were the lifeline to the things people needed.

So, how did the giants become giants?

We let them.

1. Introduction

2. The Evolution

Humans have always searched for better, faster, and cheaper ways to do things.

In the early days of brick and mortar retail in the United States, consumers had limited choice in retailers. There was no big vs. small, chain vs. independent, big box vs. specialized. There were just a handful of stores that were indispensable to towns’ residents.

At these “Mom and Pop” stores, the shop owner knew their customers, their preferences and their needs. They knew the service they provided to customers created significant value.

During the early 1800s, the boom of the Industrial Revolution made manufacturing much easier and more streamlined, and enabled the mass production of products.

And this made way for the birth of the department store in the mid-1800s, which introduced the activity of browsing. This transformed shopping from a transaction into an experience!

Department stores began purchasing directly from the manufacturer (versus a supplier). They purchased in large quantities, and learned how to manage vast amounts of merchandise.

Outside of the cities, small businesses were still the heart and soul of communities. But people in rural areas were beginning to gain access to items beyond their homes through mail-order catalogs.

They promoted value and offered everything: from underwear to kits for building homes.

Prior to 1916, grocery stores employed clerks to gather items for customers– a model which created a relationship between the store owner and the customer.

This changed in 1916 with the introduction of the self-service model. This eliminated the clerk, and put the customer in control of their purchases.

This gave consumers the freedom to browse and compare by price.

The mainstream adoption of the automobile offered Americans an even greater sense of personal freedom. Not only could they travel greater distances to get the things they needed, they could bring home more when they went shopping.

The invention of the shopping cart in 1937 gave people another way to buy more, unrestricted by the weight of a handheld basket; encouraging Americans to buy in abundance.

World War II introduced a time of restriction and scarcity and the government implemented rationing.

After the war ended, jobs became plentiful, wages were higher, and Americans became eager to spend. People moved to the suburbs, started families, and tried to live the American Dream.

Spending was encouraged and celebrated. The good purchaser devoted to ‘more, newer and better’ was the good citizen.

As more and more people moved to the suburbs, fewer Americans could simply walk down the street to do their shopping. Shopping malls catered to this new, car-driving demographic, which offered consumers the experience of one-stop-shopping.

In 1962, Walmart, Target, and Kmart came onto the scene and introduced the concept of the discount store.