When shopping was still connected to the street it was also an intensification and articulation of the street. Now it has become utterly independent - contained, controlled, surveyed.
Supermarkets must not eliminate the individual retailers and market roads like the Northcote.
Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls - you don't find a sense of community in malls.
There are lots of retailers that are now scrambling to emulate the Amazon model, so Amazon does not have a monopoly on same-day distribution or broad selection or low prices. All that said, there are advantages that accrue to the largest player, so I don't see much in the way of Amazon slowing down.
Retailing has become fiercely competitive. Today there are many large global fashion companies who have opened up mono-brand stores in major cities around the world. When I first opened my boutique in New York, in 1985, there were almost no other European luxury brands present with their own stores. Now Fifth Avenue is packed with huge stores from major Italian and French labels.
In the U.K., we have a lot of independent traders, as well as the Hobbycraft chain, but the U.S. has four of five big chains, which makes crafting very accessible for people and makes it a totally different proposition.
I don't think we yet know - because it's probably not big enough - what exactly Amazon does to our cities, but whatever it is, I don't anticipate retail wastelands. If anything, it's maybe a wake-up call to retailers that they just have to offer something meaningful to customers.
We don't believe the market can be dominated by one company in e-commerce in China - namely Alibaba. The Chinese market is very wide and deep, with a huge population.
Strip malls are history.
Retailing has gone from an information-scarce to an information-rich environment.
I don't think malls are going to go away. People still need somewhere to go, but they do have to evolve.
Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city.
What's changed in New York, and what made us really change our thinking about New York, is that the different neighborhoods are becoming more important as shopping destinations than they used to be.
The marketplace for books when I entered the business shortly after World War II consisted of a thousand or so well stocked independent booksellers in major towns and cities supplemented by thousands of smaller shops that carried limited stocks of mostly current titles along with greeting cards, toys and so on.
As demand shifts from offline retailers with limited shelf space to online channels with much larger assortments, the sales distribution is not getting fatter in the tail.
Inherently, department stores have significant advantages compared to all other retailers.
The habits of the American consumer are changing; that's a reality.
These days malls are the cathedrals of the modern world, and old buildings that had character are gone to allow for econo-worship and peso-pilgrimages.
Online is not contributing in the same way as the high street in terms of business rates and to the local community.
Even if I am predisposed to shop online, I see bricks and mortar as part of marketing.
I've been through the whole western world, and it seems to me that there's more retail floor space devoted to the sale of books than food! There's more retail floor space devoted to the sale of books than there's been in the entire history of humanity! It's grotesque!
At HSN, entertainment has quickly become a core part of who we are and is a key differentiator from others in the retail landscape.
I'm lucky that I was in retailing during the time that I call the golden age of retailing.
You can't be in a certain business and not sell to Amazon or not sell to Wal-Mart. You have to reckon with them, because even though there are other buyers, they're the only buyers that matter.
I can walk all day in malls, shopping centres, high streets - I love it.
