NEW YORK CITY—Is omnichannel the retail of the future? In the view of venture capitalist J. Skyler Fernandes, no—it's retailing now. Speaking to a standing-room-only audience at ICSC's New York Deal Making conference Tuesday, the managing director of Cleveland Avenue cited a recent Harvard Business School study showing that 70% of consumers buy in multiple channels, while just 7% buy only online and the remainder buy only at physical stores. In other words, omnichannel has become the norm.

Even as online and mobile shopping makes further inroads into brick-and-mortar traffic, Fernandes predicted the death of pure-play e-commerce. For one thing, he noted, “Mobile commerce is literally eating e-commerce's lunch.” For another thing, given that a consumer may move across channels between ordering merchandise and taking possession of it, “The line is completely blurring between what is an online sale and an in-store sale.”

Nor is innovation limited to a blending of digital and physical selling. Fernandes noted that there are “lot of disruptive new retail business models,” and posited the “third and fourth dimensions” of retailing: namely, space (using space differently) and time (focusing on experience).