What do retail multiples do? - they buy other failed multiples, add them to the offer and then lose the brand connection and relevance to the consumer.  

Centralised top down control mindset, combined with bean counting centralised cost saving mentality eventually kills the acquired brand.

It's all biased towards a cost saving and brand control outcome, not a consumer biased outcome. 

Retail has always had to work hard at getting people through the doors, this is equally true for all online retailers. 

In particular with the rise of 'social commerce' and those pesky 'nano influencers' who are diverting traffic to their own business, traffic that would at one time have gone to your website, or to that 'marketplace' you chose to sell your goods through.

To ensure customers visit retail establishments in the future–and that’s measured in days/weeks for some, months not years for others – the retail experience must be structured around the human component. 

The first step is to get back to the basics of delivering on the customer’s wants and needs, building trust, and demonstrating that our appreciation of the individual shopper goes beyond the sum and substance of her transactions. 

Companies whose revenues have been decimated by lack of income have no option but to become fiscally tighter. 

Consumers are doing something similar in fear of losing jobs, homes, and livelihoods so they're postponing discretionary spend of any kind - it's all filtering through to the worldwide economic infrastructure we once thought was impenetrable.

I've seen some great small towns reinvent themselves. 

The really good ones that came through were long ago abandoned by the retail multiples that created homogenized US style versions of a shopping mall. These created an experience that wherever you went, looked and felt no different than any other town or city.

So, along with the 'multiple retail model' we got the 'multiple retail experience' with shitty non personal service, which in my opinion misses a few huge things that makes, well, retail, retail.....

These local shops are already leveraging free to access, free to use social media platforms. 

They use this medium to engage with, and encourage customers to post about their visit to that local food hall, food festival and artisan market.

In summary they are far more relatable than BIG retail - but for some reason this point continues to get missed.