US retail was 2.9 trillion in 2000.
E-commerce was 27.6 billion of that.
0.9%
Today, US retail is 5.6 trillion dollars.
762 billion being e-commerce.
13.6%
In 20 years, retail in the US grew 93.1%.
E-commerce grew 2660%.
Cutting out e-commerce retail in both examples.
2000, retail is still 2.9 trillion.
2020, retail is now 4.8 trillion
Growth of 65%
Adjusted for inflation, psychical retail would be 4.6 trillion, meaning the industry still grew by 200 billion.
For good measure here, want to show the change between 1980 and 2000.
Physical retail was 942 billion in 1980, 100% online.
Adjusted for inflation, that’d be 1.9 trillion dollars.
The post inflation growth of retail in 1980 to 2000, was 1 trillion, versus 200 billion from 2000 to 2020, 500% more.
But some other factors.
GDP in 1980 was 2.8 trillion.
8.8 trillion today
GDP in 2000 was 10.2 trillion.
15.3 trillion today
GDP today is 21 trillion
Inflation factored GDP growth was 78.9% from 1980 to 2000.
Inflation factored GDP growth from 2000 to 2020 was 37.3%.
On top of that, population growth.
1980-227 million
2000-282 million
2020-329 million
A population growth of 24% between 1980 and 2000.
Population growth between 2000 and 2020 was only 16%. 50% less than the 20 years prior.
GDP growth was less.
Population growth was less.
Those likely were also big factors in why physical retail growth went down 800 billion from 2000 to 2020.
So did e-commerce take away from physical retail?
Yes, but not that much and it helped other businesses.
Physical retail doesn’t seem to be getting replaced by e-commerce, because many of the purchases people are making, they’d not have made without the online option.
Best example of this is Jeff Bezos in 1997 explaining why he picked books to start Amazon on.
He said 3 million books were actively in print in the world and a book store can only keep a couple thousand types of books in stock.
Bezos wanted to give people the power to buy every book available in the world.
That’s what e-commerce brings to the table. The power to buy anything.
But physical retail is still going strong, growing and it people will still always go out and physically shop.
