“We believe that ‘pure play’ retail is going away, that e-commerce companies are either going to open stores or go out of business. And retailers need to be either excellent at retail, or they will go out of business. I also believe that Amazon cannot survive as a pure play retailer.”

— Scott Galloway, NYU Professor

This is a trend all readers need to know about and follow.

The business takeaway is this: a brand cannot survive on e-commerce sales alone. While e-commerce continues to grow rapidly, multiple data points indicate that it will never overtake the market share of in-store sales. Physical store sales will always represent the lion-share of total retail sales. And brands who stick to solely e-commerce sales will see their sales growth plateau.

Here are some articles to quickly get you up to speed:

The Decline of Online Retailers: Why "Brick and Click" is the Business Model of the Future.
Entrepreneur Magazine's From Clicks To Bricks: How ECommerce Companies Benefit From Physical Stores
The Robin Report's The Real Reason ECommerce Merchants Are Opening Store