WALL STREET JOURNAL
Front Page
We're very
pleased to have been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal! Here's an excerpt:
The Outlook
What's in Store for Online Shopping
Minneapolis
In a Select Comfort store in the gigantic Mall of America here, Sharon Lemieux
touts the benefits of a $1,600 air mattress. But she reckons that bricks-and-mortar buildings don't hold the future
of retailing.
"Online is the future," Ms. Lemieux says. "Everything's going that
way."
It's a sign of the mania surrounding electronic commerce that even the salespeople
in the stores are convinced that the Internet will transform their industries, their jobs and the way their customers
shop. And it isn't just the clerks.
...
Granted, the mall is special. It offers amusement-park attractions,
as well as nightclubs and real restaurants. But should Melvin Simon & Associates, the mall's major developer,
be concerned about an Internet upstart called Reallybigmall.com? Instead of shelves and aisles, the competitor
has links to 1,000 web sites of retailers. The upstart proudly boasts twice as many "stores" as the Mall
of America.
"I would say it's a lot easier to get on a plane and come
here, and it's a lot more fun, says Maureen Hooley Bausch, the associate general manager of the nonvirtual mall....
wsj.com
We wholeheartedly agree with the last statement! It IS easy to get on a plane to Minneapolis,
and it can be a lot more fun than sitting at your computer! And if you'd like to make your reservations and catch
that plane, here's a direct link to the travel section of Really Big Mall.
Click here to return to the mall.