“80% of offline retailers will not survive”

Multichannel is “act of desperation”

Samwer made his bold statements during an
e-commerce congress in Mülheim, Germany. His prediction that e-commerce will
keep on growing for at least another twenty years will surprise no one. More
astonishing is the statement that he does not believe in the multichannel strategy currently
implemented by more and more retailers, which he describes to be an “act
of desperation”: a final but insufficient stand in the realisation that “their end is near”
and “they are getting to old”.

According to Samwer, the main cause is the
average service level in the majority of physical stores, which he deems to be just
abominable: “90% of all salespeople are just bad”. He believes that only one in five offline
retailers will make it in the end: “The absolutely professional offline
retailers will survive, but 80% will not make it”.

Amazon to become number one

The coup of online retail will bring forth some
big changes: Samwer thinks that within ten years Amazon will be the highest rated
company in the world, coinciding with the highest stock market value.

Oliver Samwer believes traditional retailers
stuck with real estate for far too long, instead of choosing for the internet. “Take
the family that owns Walmart for example: they are annoyed they did not buy
Amazon when it was worth only twenty billion dollar. Today it would cost them
at least a hundred million dollar. Only now they have seen the light and are
they starting to invest in online.”