Despite What You've Heard, Physical Retail Is Not Back.

If you’ve been following the news you’ve likely noticed a lot of headlines that proclaim the return of brick-and-mortar retail. Earlier this week the New York Times even hailed?the comeback of malls.

There is only one problem. If you think physical retail is suddenly back, you’ve been ignoring what’s been true for nearly three years.

As many of us will remember all too well, the depths of COVID crisis brought large scale shutdowns of stores for many weeks. And even when most outlets re-opened, consumers were initially slow to return to their prior shopping patterns. But facts are stubborn things—and the data shows that to the extent physical retail went anywhere, for the most part it returned rather quickly and often with a vengeance.

As?EMarketer’s data shows, 2020 did experience a—all things considered—rather minor dip in sales rung up in brick-and-mortar locations. But sales bounced back strongly in 2021, dramatically exceeding 2019 levels. Overall physical store sales continued to grow in 2022, surpassing 2020 levels by more than 15%.

Looked at through another lens, many measures of store traffic?rebounded to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021. Moreover, throughout the post pandemic period store openings continued to be robust for many retailers, with overall openings outpacing closings in both 2022 and 2023.

To be clear, like many aspects of retail, we continue to see a pattern of bifurcation. So called ‘A” malls have been performing well, while many lower-end centers continue their long-term struggles. Suburban locations of most brands are typically meaningfully outpacing the performance of their urban brethren. In a pattern that emerged pre-COVID, store closings and bankruptcies are largely concentrated among retailers trapped in?the unremarkable middle. While retailers with distinctive and highly customer relevant value propositions continue to open stores and drive strong top line growth.

This phenomenon is hardly new. It’s been clear to see if you were looking for it, while simultaneously ignoring unreliable narrators. Ask remarkable retailers if physical retail is back and the vast majority will say it was only in hibernation for a very short period of time.

It’s also important to call out the frequently important and expanding role physical locations play in facilitating online commerce growth—which does (and will) continue to outpace store growth rates by a solid margin. Brick-and-mortar locations help drive e-commerce demand and are often critical to order fulfillment via direct ship from store, local home delivery, or customers opting to “click-and-collect.”

Prior to the pandemic retailers like Walmart, Target, and Best Buy, were seeing their stores as assets to be leveraged in providing?a hybrid and harmonized?shopping experience across channels. As such they were already increasing their brick-and-mortar investments, while far too many competitors bought into the retail apocalypse nonsense and dialed back similar efforts.

The lesson here—as I wrote in?my first book?and have been speaking about for nearly a decade—is that the death of physical retail continues to be greatly exaggerated. Physical retail is definitely different. And it will continue to yield share to e-commerce.

But it is far from dead.

Ignore this at your peril.

This post is a version of an article that originally appeared?on Forbes, where I am a senior retail contributor, and on my blog.