The Village Is Saved!

Ah, the endless ruminations on the e-commerce revolution. Is it the end of the world as we know it?

Two or three months ago, e-retailing was viewed as an avalanche gaining momentum as it crashed down the mountainside, threatening to bury us all. Now a new feeling has emerged: The balmy warmth of spring is melting the avalanche, certainly slowing it down, perhaps dissolving it altogether.

Recent headlines: BeautyScene.com sells its name and assets. CDNow.com's merger deal falls through, imperiling its future.ValueAmerica.com slashes its work force and product offerings. Amazon.com's shares are roughly half their 52-week high. Shares of Etoys.com have also swooned.

But don't disconnect your search engine just yet. Dot.com will not disappear from the retail scene. And guess who some of the major new players may be: Retailers! Brands! Malls!

Several large mall developers are reportedly collaborating with their tenants to integrate e-commerce into the mall experience. Shoppers may soon be able to zap products on-site with hand-held scanners, fill up electronic shopping carts, relay the information to a check-out page, pay automatically by the electronic transmittal of their credit card number and either go home with the merchandise or arrange to have it delivered. There will also be on-site kiosks for shoppers to input such variables as size, color, quantity, etc.; enter credit card number, address or other personal information; review their shopping carts and finalize their transactions. And all of this will be web-enabled. Note the key operative term. It's on-site. This is stuff you'll do in the store, not in your pajamas.

Nor are these tradeshow-booth card tricks we've seen way too much of, bedazzling technology that exists primarily because it can exist. These are grounded in the traditional theories of retail. For retailers by retailers.

So what might this mean to you? The re-energizing of the shopping experience. Profits for you and your employer. And opportunities to flex your visual merchandising and design muscles.

I talked to one company at GlobalShop, called i-Open, which has perfected the delivery of “rich media and Internet content” — i.e., on-site graphics, information and other visual messages — directly to stores and malls via the Internet. Retailers will be able to customize their messages, regulate the timing, update constantly, etc., all from some central control point, easy as a keystroke. Of course, i-Open will only supply the technology. The design and the content will still have to come from someone who understands the product, the shopper's psyche, the power of visual cues.

So hallelujah! The avalanche may have been stopped. The village will be spared. We're safe to live another day, after all!