MARCH/APRIL 2018 25 FE ATURE “Software is eating the world,” proclaimed venture capitalist and software engineer Marc Andreessen at the 2017 Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain. “With lower start-up costs and a vastly expanded market for online services, the result is a global economy that for the first time will be fully digitally wired—the dream of every cyber-visionary of the early 1990s,” he explained. Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape, was listed as one of Time Magazine’s “Top 100 Influential People” in 2012, and currently sits on the board of directors of Facebook, eBay, and Hewlett Packard, among others. “Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming,” he predicted in a 2011 article published in The Wall Street Journal. He was right. It’s here. Since 2000, 52% of the companies in the Fortune 500 have gone bankrupt, have been acquired, or have ceased to exist, due in large part to the disruption of traditional industry models by digital ones. Retail is not immune. Over 8,600 retail stores could close this year in the U.S.—more than the previous two years combined, brokerage firm Credit Suisse says in a recent report. Meanwhile, e-commerce pure-plays are riding the rise of digital commerce to success—none more so than Amazon, which accounted for 53% of online sales growth in the U.S. last year, according to Slice Intelligence. While a great product is a given for a brand’s survival, it is no longer enough, and as America becomes plagued with “zombie malls,” brands are faced with massive inventory problems, store closures, even bankruptcy. IS RETAIL BROKEN? “Many of us who have grown up in the industry recognize that the major contributor to the current malaise started with strategies initiated over 20 years ago,” explains industry veteran George Santacroce, founder of Global Market Solutions, a consulting and research firm that has performed work for retailers and brands in the U.S., E.U., India, and Asia. Santacroce’s credits include CEO of The Collective, a luxury department store in India, and VP of Bergdorf Goodman, the luxury department store where he started the Bergdorf Goodman Men’s Store. continued on page 26 Is Retail Broken? Can Disruptive Tech Fix It? By Craig Crawford This article originally appeared in the January 2018 issue of the AATCC Review: the magazine of the textile, dyeing, and finishing industry. It is reprinted here with copyright permission from AATCC.