Friday, February 01, 2013

The Death of Traditional Retail and Local Businesses That Don't Go Global

Creatas/Thinkstock
One of my favorite tech thought leaders, Marc Andreessen (co-founder Netscape), predicts the following:
... Andreessen expects this wave to keep building and high drama to come by the end of the decade. “Retail guys are going to go out of business and e-commerce will become the place everyone buys. You are not going to have a choice,” he says. “We’re still pre-death of retail, and we’re already seeing a huge wave of growth. The best in class are going to get better and better. We view this as a long term opportunity.”
It's worth noting that Andreessen is on the Board of eBay.  His final comment in the article worth highlighting:
“My core theory is that the best software companies will win at retail, so it’ll become increasingly important for these companies to have the best software programmers in the world. And there are a lot more of them in the Valley.”
Read the entire story here.

Small businesses, start your global e-commerce engines!

Read this post (2010) as it relates to the death of certain 'local' businesses: Go Global or Your Business Will Die

1 comment:

James said...

The face of retail is definitely changing. People no longer drive hundreds of miles to shop for certain goods. They can go online wherever they are and shop for just about anything. Software developers and retailers need to be ready for the global nature of retail.