Ecommerce growth has continued its climb in the U.S. marketplace from $571 billion in 2019 to $815.4 billion in 2020 according to numbers cited by the Census.gov. Brick n mortar retailers have been adjusting to an ever changing global migration from shopping in-store to shopping online. And the pandemic did not help, at all.
Traditional retail was already experiencing a drastic change pre-pandemic:
- More than 16,000 stores closed in 2019
- 12,200 stores closed in 2020
- 10,000 stores closed in 2021
- USB analysts predicted that 80,000 U.S. stores will close by 2026.
As more people were locked down, that opened the floodgates for those wanting to shop online for necessities, groceries and feel-good items.
Global Ecommerce sat at 15% of all retail sales in 2018 and 21% in 2021. Now, its moving to 22+%.
All the doom and gloom with these numbers spell the end for traditional brick n mortar as outlined in our article, Ecommerce vs. bricknmortar. But it doesn’t have to be all negative! The good news is that this change is forcing companies to be more efficient, better at customer service and offer more offerings. It will make us better and more efficient as a buying public.