Do you have any opinions on how brick and mortar retail stores in 2026 must compete aggressively to try and keep up with online orders when Amazon sets the bar so high? How does one do that when you don't have Amazon's logistics and money?
ASKED BY · Alexander Knight · 17 OCT 2026 · ▶ 00:19:26
Don't try to out-compete Amazon on logistics; instead focus on in-person workshops, relationship building, preferred product allocation from brands, and using AI tools on customer databases to identify purchasing patterns and create targeted marketing; cite Kenmore Camera in Seattle as an example of success through experiential retail.
Highlight superior customer service and next-day delivery parity where available through retailers like B&H Photo, emphasize the risk of counterfeit products through Amazon third-party sellers, and leverage relationships with customers.
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19:25Sorry. Our next question is from Alexander Knight Guy. Do you have any opinions on how Now, brick and mortar retail stores in 2026 must compete aggressively to try and keep up with online orders when Amazon sets the bar so high. How does one do that when you don't have Amazon's logistics and money? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, Guy, because I know you have some experience in this area.
19:51It's always a challenge, you know, like even like the company that I work for and we're doing really well financially right now, but we're not at the level of Amazon. like who else is right that's always a challenge because you know from a customer service perspective people that buy from amazon they they have a certain experience for example like when you buy
20:10something from amazon the tracking information is incredibly granular and detailed and you know they have their own fleet of trucks and you can see exactly where that driver is and you know we're at the mercy of pure later and fedex and hopefully not ups because i hate ups they seem seem to be one of the, the couriers never deliver stuff properly. They never read the instructions,
20:32but that's a rant for another show. So yeah, it's just something I've been thinking about a lot. It's always a challenge. We're always trying to get better, but you know, we're probably never gonna be Amazon. What do you think about this? Yeah, I wouldn't try to beat Amazon at that game. You can't out Amazon, Amazon. I mean, they've definitely come up with this model
20:49that's just super sophisticated, but they built it over time. And so that's the thing is even if I said, hey, you should do this and this and this and this, the logistics required to do it. Because I did it. I had a 19,000 square foot building that I built to go to 50 million a year. And I tried to chase that. I tried to get NetSuite
21:06and I tried to get all these sophisticated things to automate and just try to leverage the fact that you could buy things, have them in stock and ship them very fast. In fact, on Amazon, we were what you would call fulfillment by Amazon where we could self-fulfill. So basically, you would see that it said seller fulfilled prime, and we were able to ship that fast.
21:31But everybody started doing it. And so what was a deep trench, so we thought over the years, they just kept taking more and more of our margin. And they started charging pickpack fees and long-term storage fees because we'd get a case of something and ship it down to some of their fulfillment facilities. And then we would keep some on hand. So for you, I would recommend looking at what our local camera store here in Seattle is doing.
21:52It's called Kenmore Camera. camera, they do a lot of in-person workshops. And I see, I go in there, they made this really nice training room. And so they have a lot of photographers that come in and they get to see all the new gear. So you can't be just that, go into a store, take a cut with a memory card, or they'll let you use one. You could try out different lenses. And so these guys are winning,
22:11like they're still around. And part of it is also that they've got a deep, what I would call war chest of cash. It's so nice when you're able to buy in quantity and have that quantity in stock of the hot thing. And a lot of the big brands will respect that and allocate you preferred allocation over some of the players like Amazon or B&H. I've had times where I got that relationship
22:37to where I would get the same amount as B&H. So something would come out and they would say, hey, there's only 100 coming into the country. We're going to give you 10 and we're going to give bnh 10 and we're going to give out a ram of 10 so it depends on what level you want to play at too because if you try to ramp up i mean there's that employee labor cost i mean and then
22:58there's the r d cost to build all this stuff up so just be careful what you're getting into and who you want to compete with i think if you're local you should just stay in that well i know you your chain has a couple different facility locations but i would again look at more than that we have over a hundred across oh wow we're the biggest biggest music retail company in the country
23:16Wow. So Music Trades is a great resource magazine. I don't know how familiar you are with Music Trades, but it's basically PDFs and Excel docs that you can buy that have tons of data as to what keyboards, drums, whatever's coming into the country. It's super detailed. And then I would take AI and I would actually use your customer database, see who's buying things and try to pair
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