Consumers have moved more and more towards online shopping, and physical retail has taken a hit. As a result, retailers have had to reinvent themselves to compete with these online retailers, who have much lower overhead expenses. For example, a brick and mortar retailer, Best Buy, has matched prices with Amazon and has retooled their physical locations to be showrooms and online order pickup locations. These changes have allowed Best Buy to offer an experience with their products that can't be matched online.
However, not all retailers have fended off their online competition. Amazon's first victim in the retail war was bookstores. Able to sell books online at lower costs than Borders, Books-a-Million, and Barnes & Noble, Amazon was able to use its cost advantage to shift the book buying process largely online. Now, that trend is starting to reverse, and Amazon is opening brick and mortar book stores.
Amazon isn't the only internet giant looking to go physical. Google has plans to open their first permanent location. They have been looking for retail space in NYC to sell their hardware offerings such as Chromebooks, Pixel smartphones, and Google Home speakers, directly to their customers.
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Jonathan Hipp
Jonathan Hipp began his career in real estate over 25 years ago. In his early years as a broker, he ventured into the net lease industry and quickly began leading the US net lease market, closing over $3 billion in transactions. In 2005, Jon founded Calkain Companies, a company focused solely on net lease investment services. As President and CEO, he has been instrumental in building the firm into one of the leading Net Lease real estate companies, transacting over $12 billion of net lease deal volume over the past 13 years. He has expanded Calkain’s services to include brokerage, advisory, asset management, capital markets, and industry research. He has become a well-known resource, panelist, and speaker at various Net Lease and Industry conferences and is a regular contributor to GlobeSt.com on real estate trends. In June 2015, Jon’s passion for the real estate business was again recognized as he was nominated for the Top Real Estate Player in the DC area by SmartCEO magazine.
