Commerce Spiraling

 I sat last night and watched a regional TV news piece (from the state of Hessen, via HR), and the talk was over the 2G rule enforced (you don't enter a store if you aren't vaxed-up or recovered).  Note: these were regular shops/electronic stores.  In grocery operations and pharmacies.....they don't have the 2G rule.

So, here's the trend.....brick-and-mortar shops are suffering.  The normal profits (say of 2019 or prior) aren't coming in.

What's going on?  Three things:

1.  Just to enter a clothing shop or discount store....there's some guy there at the doorway to demand your digital or paper shot record/recovered status.  Lines develop, and you might be there with thirty people in front of you.  So it's not appealing to really shop.

2.  The non-vax people?  They got smart.....they went to on-line operations (AMAZON) and ordered gifts or whatever they needed.  They might have used the on-line C and A store, or on-line Saturn (the electronics shop).  No one has a problem buying a gift-card for Christmas, and telling the kid or the associate that they can go in the spring when the 2G rule disappears.  

3.  People in general have gone to this trend.....even before Covid had ever arrived.

Brick-and-mortar shops?  In a tail-spin.

If you can buy the gift, the jacket, the cellphone, the gift-card, the coffee machine via an on-line deal.....why would you waste three hours in some chaotic Christmas season at the actual store, or worrying about Covid, or playing the 'lets-see-your-vaccine-card' deal?

2G in some weird way....dissolving an actual part of the commerce world, and potentially decreasing jobs?  Yeah....in some funny way, that's exactly what's going on.

I thought about this from my prospective.  In the past three years....I've bought a big-screen TV online.....a new refrigerator online....a new washer online....and even a new coffee machine online.  I haven't been in an actual electronics shop more than twice in the past four years.  

The brick-and-mortar places?  I'd say they are going the way of the dinosaurs.....with Covid simply increasing the pace of dying-off.  It wouldn't shock me by 2030....to see one-third of the brick-and-mortar places in my town of Wiesbaden gone.