Happy New Year Colleague,

Last year online furniture retailer Wayfair reported it spent $196 each on its 3.6 million new customers in 2018 - all that to acquire low-margin business.

That is not sustainable.

An AlixPartners survey for CNBC noted recently that the customer acquisition costs for online retailing also makes distribution costs four times higher than in-store methods.

That means...

Clicking is much more expensive for a retailer than visiting a store.

Brick and mortar stores are the billboard to a brand and the embodiment of what that brand stands for. Properly executed, stores have lower customer acquisition costs and scales; the busier the store is, the less it costs per transaction.

While you do need to have an online strategy that connects your physical store to your online store so that you can be wherever your shopper is to fulfill their desire for a product, you can’t allow your stores to get the short shift.

Here are 5 steps retailers need to embrace to compete with online:

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