First off, struggling retailers are struggling for multiple reasons. Before jumping to pure-play online, brick-and-mortar retailers need to honestly assess what is wrong with their business. Rarely is physical location the only problem.

The fundamental reality is that pure e-tailing is NOT in the DNA of physical retailers. Pure online takes incredible systems, technology and skill-sets to manage the business hourly and at the individual customer CRM level.

And the bottom line as to why most brick-and-mortar teams would fail at pure online is that consumers will benchmark them against the world’s best — Amazon. It’s not just about driving traffic and selling products online … it is all about being competitive with a total experience before, during and after the sale. Amazon sets the golds standard that even Walmart is scrambling to meet.

If you’re not offering products consumers want in stores, why should they want the same products online? Yes, online-only can reduce the cost of retail real estate and may save money on labor, but making a sale is still about having products that consumers want.

Online-only needs to be a proper strategic decision, not a last-ditch effort. It is generally easier to run an e-commerce site but it is extremely hard to do it well (and profitably). The biggest mistake that retailers switching to online-only make is that they digitize their real-world retail experience rather than breaking down the business and building it up from the ground. It is possible for a struggling retailer to be successful online-only but it is pretty unlikely unless they completely revise the business.

I couldn’t agree more with many of the comments re: brick-and-mortar not being the sole cause of someone going out of business. Assortment, overbuilding, logistics expenses or failures, customer experience — all these are the actual reasons that retailers are suffering yet it’s easy to close stores as a way to show The Street you are “making progress” and shifting to the shiny e-commerce bauble.

I also think they will find that losing access to their stores as strategic distribution points for their inventory will hurt. Shipping things from one or two national DCs and expecting that you will be able to make money AND satisfy heightened customer demands is somewhat foolish. The store networks plus omnichannel tech give these retailers advantages over pure-play participants.

On the other side, smartly moving into marketplaces and cross-border commerce — with or without stores — is a winning strategy and sounds like something chains like Bebe are starting to recognize.

Bottom line, if people weren’t shopping in Bebe stores that means they don’t want their stuff. They are not going to shop in their online store either. It is sad that so many brick-and-mortar stores will be closing down, but shopping online is just more convenient for all generations. Life has changed, all moms are working now and no one is home to just go shopping from store to store anymore.

The online competition is fierce. The good thing is that online stores can offer a much larger selection than physical stores. But they will have to have great prices, easy ways to pay and very fast shipping in order to stay in the game. In the end you can have all of that but you need customers first.

For retailers across industries, being able to pair a successful physical and online store is ideal for creating a strong brand and building a large and loyal customer following. However, given today’s highly digitized world, resorting to an online-only approach is a viable option for struggling retailers. Online shopping rates are growing at exponential rates, giving online stores the ability to expand their customer base and sustain a retailer’s business—but only if done right. Customers today expect more from their online shopping experiences, including speed, convenience, and around-the-clock accessibility. In order to build a strong reputation after failing in brick-and-mortar, retailers like Bebe need to ensure they are excelling at the online shopping fundamentals and are keeping up with the latest tech trends. Creating a mobile-friendly site is essential, as more shoppers are making purchases on the go. Additionally, building a strong social media presence is becoming increasingly important for both reaching new customers and creating customer loyalty. Last, adopting new technologies, such as address verification, is important for enhancing user experience and combating key… Read more »

Desperation moves — doing something because everything else has failed — usually don’t work. Of course there are marginal retailers for whom the reduced cost structure of online, assuming of course that the costs really ARE less, may prove the difference between being in business and not being in business. (Which group these two fall into is impossible to know.) But it’s unlikely to be a solution to the very basic problem of trying to sell what people just don’t want to buy.

In the case of very specific niche verticals, it may work to go full on e-commerce. But for the majority of brands, this will be a losing strategy. The store is the experience, and unless you have exceptional branding and following, such as a Frank + Oak, it’s not a realistic alternative.

The reality is, e-commerce is not profitable and is a very hard business to turn a profit in, unless your name is Amazon.

E-commerce brands opening up stores is a much more natural thing to do, in my humble opinion. Not only is pure e-tailing not in the DNA of physical retailers, it takes a completely different skill-set and budget to make it work. Since the majority of retailers fail in omnichannel and even multi-channel, it’s hard seeing this trend gaining much steam.

Brands that are shuttering that many retail locations will have a hard time creating demand solely for online, and they will also need to create an e-commerce experience that is more brand engaging than most e-commerce digital catalog experiences. On the first point, those store locations drove demand not only for brick and mortar, but also were constant billboards for growth and traffic of their e-commerce sites. In the absence of physical stores, brands will have to either spend a great deal more on digital advertising and re-marketing or they will see demand slowly ebb away.

And on the second point, stores are incredibly supportive of the brand relationship. Most e-commerce sites lack that recognition and engagement and feel more like an order entry site. Those migrations for new digital only brands will have to go a long way to invest in relevant content as well as more individualized brand experiences so the shopper feels like they are known and recognized as loyal shoppers online.