As Amazon closes in on estimates it will account for half of all online retail sales by 2021, networks that forge alliances among non-Amazon players have sprung up. I'm really curious how many more there will be and the extent to which Amazon-indoctrinated consumers will adopt them.

I read many - probably too many - articles about retail. More than any I’ve seen recently, last week’s The New Yorker article, "Why J. Crew's Vision of Preppy America Failed", nails so much about retail today. 

I'm not usually one to wallow in the doom and gloom angles of retail. But writing about an evergreen retail topic or recent store visit right now would seem to be ignoring the elephant in the dressing room. The 89,000 U.S. retail workers who have been laid off since October outnumber all of the people employed in the U.S. coal industry

For an increasing number of purchases, consumers don’t need to enter a physical retail store. It's why foot traffic is down: When consumers know they want to buy something, they often can do it online. 

Consumers need reasons to enter stores even when they don't intend to buy. Here's what I've seen drawing traffic recently and keeping visitors inside.

About weekly, I get this question from someone who sees the headlines but doesn't follow US retail - specifically the fashion segment of the industry - closely. Without spewing a lot of stats, I usually touch on some or all of the following.

We’ve heard the doom-and-gloom about U.S. department stores. Yet, the retail community warmly received recent news of Anthropologie & Co., which is basically a department store. Why the optimism? Let’s take a step back and consider what made department stores appealing in the first place.