This article about small banks could’ve very well been written about small retail stores. The future is tech. Bank of America has spent $20b on tech since 2012. Big retailers have likely spent that or more. And small businesses often don’t have the resources to make customers happy online. Much less survive a hacking attempt. I spent the last 2 weeks dealing with hackers from Asia. It took 3 tech people 2 weeks. Expensive. Time consuming. If small stores had to deal with this on their own, most small stores would just give up and shut their online store—and that would lose them even more customers.
Thankfully, Bridge is there to serve indie stores and help make their customers happy online. (Yes, there are hacks—but that’s the world we live in. We even have foreign countries trying hack U.S. businesses.) Bridge shoppers are some of the happiest customers out there. Our retailer Babcock Gifts in Tennessee has 650+ positive reviews, many of which praise their Bridge website.
In addition to tech spending, there are other parallels between banking and retail. Banks are consolidating and getting bigger and bigger while local banks are closing. Today most assets are now held by a few major banks—whereas 30 years ago local banks held about 30% and mid size banks held 40%. Now it’s all about the majors. In retail, the same trend follows. Major retailers have bulldozed small and mid size stores.