If you have ever trekked to a store only to be told the item you are looking for is out of stock but can be ordered online, you aren’t alone. The practice is so common that retailers have a name for it.
“We called it SOS—Save Our Sale,” said Jerry Storch, a former chief executive of Toys “R” Us and Saks Fifth Avenue parent HBC.
Lucia Gulbransen, a stylist in Westport, Conn., has another name for it: “Retail gymnastics.”
“It’s really time-consuming,” said Gulbransen, 58.
The consulting firm AlixPartners studied 30 retailers and found that on average only 9% of their online women’s clothing assortment was available in physical stores. For department stores, the percentage was 7%, and at mass merchants it was 2%. Specialty retailers fared better, with a third of their online goods available in stores.
Merchandise sits behind locked security cabinets at a drugstore. - Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The internet ushered in a new era of shopping nirvana, in which we could order whatever we wanted from the comfort of our couch. It also has siphoned money and merchandise away from bricks-and-mortar stores, turning buzzy emporiums into dilapidated mausoleums. Retailers have vastly expanded the breadth of products they sell online to better compete with Amazon.com, making the offerings in their physical stores feel paltry by comparison.
Retail CEOs like to say they want customers to shop however they want—either online, in stores or a combination of the two. The reality is that they make more money when customers buy from physical stores because packing and shipping expenses eat into online profits.
There are, of course, standouts who have managed to keep shopping fun. Luxury brands such as Hermès dazzle shoppers with their flagship stores. Nordstrom is still known for superior service. And customers love hunting through the racks at T.J. Maxx looking for a deal.
But when it comes to the stockroom, even the best stores can’t keep up with the internet.
The gulf has widened further as chains have opened smaller stores. Retailers can hold far more inventory at central distribution centers that fulfill online orders than at any one store. Plus, figuring out how many size smalls of a navy blue sweater should go to store A versus store B is a lot harder than having all the inventory in one place.
Nearly three-quarters of consumers prefer shopping in physical stores, but only 9% are satisfied with the store experience. Chief among their complaints is a lack of product variety and availability in stores, according to a 2024 survey of 20,000 people in 26 countries by the IBM Institute for Business Value.
Alanis Castro, a senior at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., was on the hunt for a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans. Yet every time she visited a store, they were out of her size. The salesperson offered to have them shipped to her, but she wanted to try them on first to avoid paying a $7 return shipping fee if they didn’t fit. She also wanted the instant gratification of walking out of a store with her purchase in hand.
“If I wanted to order it online, I would have done that from home,” the 21-year-old said.
Abercrombie offers such a wide selection of jeans, from size 23 to 37 in short, long and curvy styles, that it is difficult for stores to carry the entire assortment, a spokeswoman for the retailer said.
Abercrombie & Fitch says it is hard for a store to carry the entire assortment of jeans. - Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Stock levels ballooned during the Covid-19 pandemic because of supply-chain snarls. In a course correction, retailers over the past few years reduced their inventory. Some now acknowledge that they cut their assortment too close to the bone.
“We thought, ‘We can do more with a lot less,’ and that didn’t work out for us,” Tom Kingsbury, Kohl’s then-chief executive, said after the company scaled back popular private-label brands and petite clothing sizes. Kohl’s is reversing those moves.
“Retailers have pivoted too hard to e-commerce and neglected the in-store experience, and that has got to swing back,” said Don Hendricks, chief executive of department-store chain Belk.
Belk now holds all of its inventory at its roughly 290 stores, after closing its online fulfillment center in 2022. The move is part of a strategy by Hendricks to improve the in-store experience by ensuring that more customers find what they are looking for when they visit a store.
For now, some retailers are sending shoppers on a wild-goose chase.
Abby Carlos, a 27-year-old media strategist, was on the hunt for a pair of Zara pants that she had seen on TikTok. She visited three Zara stores near her home in Garfield, N.J., but none had the beige color in her size. Ditto for a black maxi dress.
A Zara spokeswoman said shoppers can check in-store availability online and ask salespeople to ship most items to a store.
Carlos chose a different option. She left empty-handed.
Zara shoppers can ask salespeople to ship most online items to a store. - Bing Guan/Bloomberg News
