Sometimes the market changes and we don't adapt quickly enough. Maybe we don't even see it coming. When we first built Retailer News Online in March of 1998, the proven business model for making money online was to build a content-laden Website, attract lots of visitors and then sell advertising. Since that time the model has changed. Advertising prices have plummeted, and people have stopped clicking on banner ads.
Retailers face the same challenges daily.
Maybe nobody's buying what they used to. Last year's hot seller is now gathering dust in the back room. Maybe your freestanding downtown location has become a ghost town as all of your customers head to the mall. For others maybe they find themselves in a dying mall. Still others may find downtown restoration projects pulling traffic away from their mall and back downtown or out to the suburbs.