Amazon
Recently the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos became the richest person in the world is worth $135 billion according to Forbes.com. Founded in 1994 Amazon is an online site where customers can purchase goods of all kinds; electronics, books, etc. The company started out small like most but once the online market grew so did Amazon. At around 2010 Amazon started making their first billions. In the 21 century, many stores cannot keep up with the online business. And as more people own electronics more buy from the internet.
Sears
You may have heard that the 100+-year-old retail store known as Sears filed for bankruptcy in the fall of 2018. When Richard Sears moved to Chicago he and another man named Alvah Roebuck opened Sears, Roebuck, and Company commonly referred to as Sears today. They out by selling watches and jewelry, but eventually made Kenmore which had a larger variety. Kenmore is a brand that is owned by Sears. Once they opened their first retail store in 1925 it was a massive threat for some small stores. Throughout the rest of the 1900s Sears keeps going strong starting things like Discover, Craftsman, and Allstate while also having the grand opening of the Sears tower. In 2005 Sears is bought and becomes apart of Kmart. In 2018 they go bankrupt and close
Toys ‘R’ Us
In 2018 the widely known toy store Toys ‘R’ Us finally closes for good. After declaring its bankruptcy on September 18, 2017, only lasting a year before officially closing stores. This was partly because of the rise of the online market. Through they did have a online shop they were out done by Amazon who alone made more than double what Toys ‘R’ Us did. Amazon is blamed by most, believing that they were responsible for the closing. However that would be incorrect.
Although Amazon does rule the virtual market, they aren’t the only online site where customers can purchase goods. There are still a lot of other big name stores like walmart, estly, ebay, etc that simply offered better and cheaper shipping than the giraffe. They were also deeply in debt and were reportedly spending up to 400 million per year. With that, Babies and Toys ‘R’ Us closed more than 800 total stores.
Since the modern day smartphone is used by an estimated 2.5 billion people, eBay launched their mobile app in 2008 and were followed by Amazon who launched theirs in 2011. Amazon has a feature called Prime that can be paid for annually and comes with free shipping for most products. Prime also comes with Prime Video, Amazon Music, and Prime Reading. As of April 2018 there are over 100,000,000 members of prime.
