IKEA city district

IKEA announced plans to build an entire city district in London, near the Olympic Village. I guess people will have to put the houses together with those little wrenches.

Lego Park?

Quote: EvenBob

Lego Park?

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Many visionaries (including Walt Disney) imagined building cities from scratch.

We may even have an IKEA-GOOGLE partnership where a city district is built from scratch, with fiber optics already installed. The only cars permitted will be electric vehicles, and you will be able to participate in city events from town council meetings to rock concerts from your flat screen TV's.

I am not totally convinced that stores are really cost effective anymore. The efficiency of a store is that you have only one place to deliver your truckload of goods. But there are thousands of inefficiencies, like the construction cost, the energy to heat and light the store, the employees, the tons of goods that aren't purchased and thrown away, the stealing and spoilage, etc. The modern way to run a city may be just to have display fronts to show off the goods in real life, and then deliver the packages to the individuals homes.

Quote: pacomartin

and then deliver the packages to the individuals homes.
]

I get a lot of my stuff delivered now. Pet food, coffee, books
and DVD's, clothes, cat litter, computers. Why leave home if
you don't have to. You get a much better description of stuff
on the internet than you do in the store. I just got a smart
phone from TracFone delivered on Friday.

Maker dot com envisioning large scale devices including a personal airplane.
And recently a digital house was constructed via a dot matrix printer type robotic print head.

plane

Quote: EvenBob

I get a lot of my stuff delivered now. Pet food, coffee, books
and DVD's, clothes, cat litter, computers. Why leave home if
you don't have to. You get a much better description of stuff
on the internet than you do in the store. I just got a smart
phone from TracFone delivered on Friday.

Do you really believe that this is a sustainable, desirable model that will attain widespread popularity as the oil starts to run out?

Quote: WongBo

Do you really believe that this is a sustainable, desirable model that will attain widespread popularity as the oil starts to run out?

There is 100+ years of oil left, and history shows when one energy source runs out, an innovative person will find a new energy source.

Unless you tax and regulate the crap out of such a person as we do today. Imagine in 1860---"Hey, Col Drake, you didn't drill that well---somebody else did that!"

Quote: pacomartin

I am not totally convinced that stores are really cost effective anymore. The efficiency of a store is that you have only one place to deliver your truckload of goods. But there are thousands of inefficiencies, like the construction cost, the energy to heat and light the store, the employees, the tons of goods that aren't purchased and thrown away, the stealing and spoilage, etc. The modern way to run a city may be just to have display fronts to show off the goods in real life, and then deliver the packages to the individuals homes.

I think that many of the savings you mention are illusiory Paco. The goods still need to be shipped and 20 UPS vans are probably a larger carbon footprint than 1 full size truck. The goods must at some point be broken down and packaged for individual customers this takes employees and is unlikely to be done outside. Some of these employees are probably dishonest.

I think that the direct ship market has already proven that they can be competitive but the overhead costs are still there although likely lower than the typical retail environment of today. Innovation will occur and projecting the direct ship trend to an ultimate end of stores I think is rather far fetched.

Remember that direct ship retail thrived 100 years ago when North America was not as urbanized as today, think Sears Catalogue, but things changed.

Quote: kenarman

I think that the direct ship market has already proven that they can be competitive but the overhead costs are still there although likely lower than the typical retail environment of today. Innovation will occur and projecting the direct ship trend to an ultimate end of stores I think is rather far fetched.

Direct-ship seems to work fine if people have stable orders, or if the product is fairly sepcialized and the cost of warehousing at 1,000 BBY stores is higher than keeping 100 units at 10 distribution centers. Even better if it is a small operator making custom prodcuts out of the basement.

I laughes at people in 1998 who said stores would dissapear and "everything would be sold online in 10-20 years." Online works great for many things but not all. There are things I need to buy at the grocery store all the time, but the only Christmas Shopping I have done in a store the last 2 years is the wrapping paper itself. I love online for that because I have a "No WMT, no made-in-china, nothing that uses batteries for kids" rule I try to follow. Try that without buying online, see how far you get.

Quote: AZDuffman

Direct-ship seems to work fine if people have stable orders, or if the product is fairly sepcialized and the cost of warehousing at 1,000 BBY stores is higher than keeping 100 units at 10 distribution centers. Even better if it is a small operator making custom prodcuts out of the basement.

I laughes at people in 1998 who said stores would dissapear and "everything would be sold online in 10-20 years." Online works great for many things but not all. There are things I need to buy at the grocery store all the time, but the only Christmas Shopping I have done in a store the last 2 years is the wrapping paper itself. I love online for that because I have a "No WMT, no made-in-china, nothing that uses batteries for kids" rule I try to follow. Try that without buying online, see how far you get.

I think it is clear that online options have changed the retail landscape. "Big box" stores have put many smaller retailers out of business. I don't think stores will ever go away entirely, however there are many empty malls in America that testify to to power of the internet.

I wonder about our mailboxes. Perhaps there is a market for a large, secured, temperature controlled delivery recepticles for the average home. Leaving packages on doorsteps is neither safe, nor efficient. And having to go to the shipper's hub to pick up a package that doesn't fit in your mail slot or box, is a huge inconvenience.

Of course from the description above, it sounds like an old refrigerator with a padlock on your porch.

Quote: AZDuffman

There is 100+ years of oil left,

More than that. They keep discovering new reserves all
the time as oil prospecting gets more sophisticated.

Quote: kenarman

I think that the direct ship market has already proven that they can be competitive but the overhead costs are still there although likely lower than the typical retail environment of today. Innovation will occur and projecting the direct ship trend to an ultimate end of stores I think is rather far fetched.

I also think that people like to go shopping. But in an urban district of the future (perhaps designed by Ikea) there may be provisions to reduce the cost of direct shipment to the home. Perhaps some variant of the venerable alleyway, that is designed for a custom delivery vehicle with easily accessed versions of giant mailboxes. You can see the item you want online, or sample it in the store, and it will be delivered. That way you don't have huge inventories, and have to throw away or sell the excess items.

Here is an artist's conception of a robotic delivery system that moves through electrified tunnels in an urban core.

" "Big box" stores have put many smaller retailers out of business. " Truer words were never spoken. Grand junction has a population of 80,000. In came America's furniture warehouse 6 months ago. now gone are 3 local furniture stores , 1 mattress store, and one high-end seller of used furniture.

Besides, oil is a renewable resource.