Sutherland’s Law of Bad Maths

Imagine for a moment a parallel universe in which shops had mostly not yet been invented, and that all commerce took place online.

This may seem like a fantastical notion, but it more or less describes rural America 100 years ago. In 1919 the catalogues produced by Sears, Roebuck & Company and Montgomery Ward were, for the 52 per cent of Americans who then lived in rural areas, the principal means of buying anything remotely exotic. In that year, Americans spent over $500 million dollars on mail order purchases, half through the two Chicago companies. Yet in 1925, Sears opened its first bricks and mortar shop. By 1929, the pair had opened a further 800.

So Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods Market may be history repeating itself. Certainly we Brits have every right to feel smug about it since, by moving into physical retailing, Amazon seems to have spent several hundred billion dollars only to discover that Argos had it right all along.