Coding without a laptop: Two weeks with AR glasses and Linux on Android

  >  I wish they were sold in a store that I could just walk into and try them for a minute.

Being a lanky kinda guy I could never find clothes in my sizes in store but it was still quite helpful to see the difference between certain materials and would often lead to buying a more expensive version than another. Without the stores, it just seems to make a market of lemons[0], and I think that's kinda apt given general consumer frustration. You can't rely on reviews and you can't rely on images or even product descriptions...

How the fuck am I supposed to know what I'm buying?

My hypothesis is that some bean counters saw that sales were plummeting in stores and concluded that they should then close them. Having the inability to recognize that the purpose of the store had changed, despite them likely using the stores in the new fashion themselves. Hard to make effective decisions if the only viewpoint you have is that of a spreadsheet...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

  * Real estate in high-traffic areas, especially in malls (do those still exist?) can be extremely expensive.
  * With retail stores, shoplifting is the business's problem, after the switch to ecommerce, a lot of theft is shifted to being the customer's problem (porch pirates)
  * Customer service staff in the store are likely more expensive than outsourcing call centers and now AI is well on the way to cutting out most of those jobs.

I think Apple does a really good job at blending their physical stores and their online business into a very seamless experience. Not many companies can operate at that level of excellence. Although I have many complaints about Apple's business practices, however, their retail stores and customer service experience are not among them.

You have all the pieces but you're not putting them together.

Bricks and mortar stores cost money just to exist - rent, rates, staffing, etc. - and that's why they can't compete on price with online stores, which can just be giant warehouses with shipping. The online arms of some physical stores can benefit from the same economies as totally online businesses, leading to cheaper prices online even for companies with a physical presence.

How can a physical shop make any money if they are just treated as a gallery for browsing before the buyer heads to Amazon to get the item 10% cheaper? It's not bean counting, it's basic economics.

How the fuck are you supposed to know what you're buying, indeed - patronise physical businesses because you recognise the value in their existence, and understand that that's worth paying an additional premium for.

  > Bricks and mortar stores cost money just to exist

I agree that Apple is doing it right and is kinda what I'm talking about. They do focus on the experience even though I'm sure most sales translate to online sales. They do understand that the physical presence generates many of these sales. It's not trivial to measure like direct sales but it is measurable.

I'll admit Apple has an advantage that it isn't a franchise (pretty sure?). But that doesn't mean the other companies couldn't adapt to the new environment. But clearly a lot of them failed due to this. The experience still matters to customers but if they don't have many choices they still gotta do what they gotta do

In some franchises, store owners get a vote on change. They also have no inventive or desire to be a mere showcase for purchases happening elsewhere, such as online.

Combine this with a sometimes contracted inability for the company to "compete" with franchises, and you get some very weird behaviour.

And the of course, as people and politics are involved, you may see non-optimal, status quo results from votes.

It's only really been 15 years, since retailers have really seen a notable dive in store sales, and the last 5 years being the most harsh.

Meatspace speed is slow. Most of the world's behaviour is ossified compared to people on HN.

In other words, the Internet is fairly new. I think eventuality we'll see some stabilization here, over the next 10 years.

An example...

Used to be, before opening trade with China, that most cultery was made in the US. There were in fact 4 or 5 main manufacturers of cutlery.

Once the cheap stuff came in, this all collapsed. All of them shut or went bankrupt.

Yet out of the ashes one emerged, and I think a second now. The market was in such turmoil, sales collapsed so fast, that they all weakened at once.

But at least one can exist.

My point is, we're in this period of chaos now. It'll sort out I think.

> I've constantly wondered why this doesn't really exist.

and if you understand that real stores are more expensive to run than online stores, then the rest seems obvious?

Places like that did exist in the past - they were the places we had to go to buy things. Online prices are lower so people bought online instead and drove most of them out of business.

Perhaps I'm missing something?

2) My example was clothing. I certainly think this makes sense as a setting in such an environment. Let you look and try. Directly sell most common sizes, transfer to online purchase for others. You can even have employees measure customers to get the right fits! Now you could even do the virtual tryons. This is very different than racks of clothes.

3) I think you forgot about stores like Sharper Image, Electronics Boutique, or Brookstone. Customers frequently would go into these stores to just see all the random gadgets and stuff. I can certainly remember going into Brookstone dozens of times yet not actually buying anything. Thing is, what these stores were good at was advertising products. But they were terrible at selling them because you could always find the same things somewhere else for cheaper, like Sears.

Like I've said, the value of many of the physical stores was not just in direct sales. That was a fine metric in the old days, but things changed and so did many other things. My original comment was a claim that a myopic view was applied, hyper focusing on the limited direct sales metric. But coke doesn't advertise to make you aware of coke nor do car companies advertise to make you aware of cars. They do things differently because their size and markets are different.

My point of a lemon market is that with the loss of ability to physically scrutinize products, you cannot tell the difference between a lemon or a peach. What I didn't say, is that this incentivizes more dark patterns like making returns difficult. Part of Amazon's quick adoption was free returns, making the downside of buying a lemon low, only costing you time. But the idea of tricking you into buying something, especially with a subscription, and making you live with the purchase sounds more like the strategy of an infomercial penis pill scam, not a blue chip business.

Could you please provide enough detail here in your example, that we can discuss and quantify what that value is, so we can compare it with the cost of running the store?

Let's say we have an "all the XR glasses" store that lets visitors try on different XR glasses and see what fits, and the visitors then later buy them from Amazon because the glasses are cheaper there.

p.s.: on multiple posts, you've taken non-personal comments extremely personally (e.g. stuff like 'how dare you say something I already know [because I am smart], thus assuming I don't know it and am dumb'), and attacking others as well, almost as if the topic is you, and not your comment. Just to head that off at the pass: I'm interested in discussing what you said, not in discussing myself or you. You're a smart person. Let's focus on substance.

If I came across as insulting you or anyone else, then I'm sorry - that was not my intention. I'm trying to express my confusion because I think we're talking across each other somehow, and I don't understand how.

Secondly, and related to that - when I said 'Perhaps I'm missing something?', that was intended as a genuine invitation to you to fill me in on what obvious/non-obvious thing I'm missing. Maybe I am in fact being stupid! It happens regularly. I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm trying to open the door to further discourse.

So with that out of the way - what am I missing? The problem seems straightforward to me, and I will try to lay out my thinking clearly here, not to imply that you don't understand any of this, but rather to make it easier for you to find and fill in the gap for me:

- physical shop buys trinket for $10, costs are estimated at $5, physical shop sells trinket for $16, making $1 profit

- online shop buys trinket for $10, costs are estimated at $3, online shop sells trinket for $14, making $1 profit

Result: physical shop goes out of business because (insert large percentage here) of customers see trinket in physical shop, decide they want it, then find it cheaper online and order it there; physical shop doesn't sell enough things in aggregate to cover its large fixed costs, and can no longer sustain the business. Even small savings are very valuable to a lot of people, as demonstrated, for example, by all the websites specialising in price comparison, and the behaviour of people during the sales season.

So from your replies you clearly think that's overly simplistic, but I don't understand why, and I'm asking for clarification in the spirit of discussion, if you're willing to entertain that.

I think the key difference is in this: "...there's more business value than direct sales..." but if you mean that enough people place enough value in try-before-you-buy to make it worth running a physical shop, then I would say that the massive decline in high-street stores in the last 10-15 years says otherwise. Side note that another problem shops face is choosing what stock to hold; a physical store almost never beats online stores for variety of inventory, which was another nail in the coffin so to speak.

So that's my hot take; by all means shoot me down - I don't mind if I've missed something obvious and if so I'd love to learn from the experience.

And if you were having a bad day yesterday for other reasons, then I hope today is going better for you.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43873275

  >>>>>> Malls offered a lot more business value than just facilitating direct purchases. They do a lot to build brands, loyalty, and advertise to customers.

If you wish for a thorough analysis then my answer is "This is Hacker News". Such an expectation is excessive and out of scope of the platform.

I am happy to have my statements rebutted and critiqued but not by accusation of failing to account for widely understood and basic conditions. If you believe I am improperly evaluating the costs of these, then that is another matter and I am happy to have those discussions. Even if these are the conjecture of two rational and reasonably informed people without direct and detailed analysis. If you wish to seek out research and do detailed analysis I not only will not stop you, I'd encourage you. This would be a great way to counter my comment and have a high likelihood of changing my belief/understanding of the environment.

  > p.s.: on multiple posts,

Frankly, because not operating under this belief generates fighting, degrades conversations, and derails conversations. As others might more succinctly say "this isn't Reddit." I am only trying to be explicit in stating why such retorts are low quality.

It appears that frequently people do not realize the assumptions that their responses makes.

  > I already know [because I am smart]

The push-back is not "because I am smart" but rather "because I am not incredibly ignorant."

I do not want to conflate the two. They are significantly different. The reason "I already know" is conditioned on my intelligence being above that of a child. This is what generates the insult and the more aggressive follow-up after they doubled down. It is not conditioned on being above average, nor being in the "smart" category.

Let's look at the original response

  >>>>> Bricks and mortar stores cost money just to exist

Mind you, my original comment also demonstrates awareness that these physical stores have operational costs. My critique makes no sense otherwise, as there would be no reason to even close these stores if they were free to operate. So this contributes to the reason danparsonson's response is inappropriate and insulting. It is in bad faith (the faith being I'm not malicious nor unreasonable).

I think you should also look back to how I responded much differently to 20after4. I did equally push back at their first point which is equally egregious. But I move on and engage with the rest. Their comment has additional substance and isn't entirely contingent upon excessive naivety, whereas that is all there is to danparsonson's (their third line completely ignores my entire thesis of physical locations providing value other than direct sales and is itself making the same error I am criticizing: hyper-fixation on measuring operational value through direct sales). So they get different responses.

  > Let's focus on substance.

If that were so, you would not have had multiple people ask you for clarification or specifics.

> Malls offered a lot more business value than just facilitating direct purchases. They do a lot to build brands, loyalty, and advertise to customers

Thanks, I think what you are missing is that it appears, based on the evidence, that the "more business value" examples you cite are often not enough to keep stores open, hence all the store closings.

This was obvious to multiple people, so the assumption on the part of multiple people was that you had some theory or model or analysis or evidence to add which would say otherwise. It appears that is not the case. Indeed, you were given the opportunity to demonstrate by example, but did not take it.

p.s.: In seeking a better conversation, I've omitted the part of your response dealing with you or me as a primary topic.

  > If that were so, you would not have had multiple people ask you for clarification or specifics.

  >  examples you cite are often not enough to keep stores open, hence all the store closings.

  > This was obvious to multiple people,

Responding this way also is inappropriate to my comment too. My comment would lead to the claim that stores closed because they failed to adapt to a changing environment. This would consequentially lead to exactly identical settings.

If you want evidence for why you might want to believe this, look at Sears. A store that famously had a mail based catalogue. Their failure to adapt to internet markets is widely discussed as from a hindsight perspective it seems crazy that they didn't dominate. They were literally doing an "online store" before the internet existed. You can also look to Blockbuster, which is also famously written about.

The point is that what's obvious post hoc isn't obvious in situ. Sears made a great blunder underestimating the popularity of online stores and continuing operating as normal (not adapting). Given that one of the leaders in the market made such an "obvious" blunder, I don't think we can rule out that others didn't similarly miscalculate.

If you think this is not the case, cool! Argue that! But you should justify it. Say why I'm dumb. Evidence it. But I'm not going to accept your claim if it is premised on people being oracles. They aren't now, we have evidence that they weren't then, so I don't have reason to believe that happened. It also doesn't align well with the order in which businesses failed nor align with explaining why certain ones are still around. You miss that my claim has such an explanation. But you need to actually think about what I said...

I welcome you calling me an idiot. But if you're going to do it, put some serious effort into it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

> If you think this is not the case, cool! Argue that!

This is literally your role here. You are disputing what multiple people have told you. If you think that the 'other value' is enough to keep stores open, then argue that (with numbers, obviously: this is HN, not reddit). If you think that stores aren't adapting, and that's why they're failing, and if they do X they would succeeded, then argue that, and describe X (with numbers, obviously: this is HN, not reddit).

We all know that a store provides more value than a warehouse. But is said extra value able to economically sustain properly-managed stores? The evidence (store closings) points to "mostly no". Your theory says "yes", (and perhaps that the store closings are actually a result of not doing X). Your theory is thus explicitly numbers-based. So how do you expect anyone to argue against the numbers in your theory when you haven't provided any?

As it stands now, your hypothesis is on equal footing, in terms of evidence, with "they didn't pray to the right god enough", and equally unconvincing. This is HN, not reddit: let's hear the specifics, not make random unconvincing claims and insist that proving or disproving them is someone else's job.

I'll get you started on your job of convincing someone other than yourself that your theory holds water, by providing an example with which you can proceed: Let's say we have an "all the XR glasses" store that lets visitors try on different XR glasses and see what fits, and the visitors then later buy them from Amazon because the glasses are cheaper there.

Ok, now your turn: go. How do they stay alive? If you can come up with something feasible and convincing, I might even start this store and give you a cut! :)