It's the year 2016 and you might have the feeling that your brick and mortar shop is something from the last century. The following are, in our opinion, the top 5 risks your shop is facing.

1. eCommerce

At the very beginning of online shopping Brick and Mortar shops had the advantage of trust. Customers were reluctant on sharing their credit card details with some entity they couldn't even see. They also didn't trust that what they saw in the pictures was real. Only the technological savvy dared purchase online. It also had its inconveniences as it usually took weeks if not months to get your goods.

You could argue that at that point, shop owners that kept focusing on their physical shop were more succesful than those that invested in their online shop. But this isn't true anymore.

The agility of Amazon Premium's service, delivery in 1 day, or the ridiculously low prices of Alibaba are completely disrupting the traditional shopping model.

But technology is not against you. It's something you can leverage as well and I'll explain that in an upcoming blog post.

2. Rent cost

As the city center develops, the good places, where most of the people pass by, get more expensive. This leaves you with 2 options:

1. Increase your revenue to be able to pay the higher rents
2. Giving up your space to a big retail brand and pay the cost of relocating and then figure out to increase your footfall

3. The Big Brands

The big brands that are establishing their shops next to yours have huge budgets to spend in advertising and branding. They also tend to be more up to speed with innovative ideas and technologies like Online Shops, Loyalty Programs, Beacons or Mobile Apps.

4. Traffic

The rents don't just increase for businesses. They do for people too. Therefore, people leave to areas further away from the city center and to get to your shop they need to go by car. The problem is that Parking lots didn't develop as quick and properly so it's getting more and more inconvenient for your customers to reach you.

5. Malls

If the customers won't come to the shops, the shops will leave the city center into a mall closer to their homes. Customers prefer big malls over heading to the city center because they're more convenient for cars. And because of the popularity of the malls, renting a space is expensive as well and is already filled with Big Brands!

Do you agree with the above list? Let us know with your comments and share us on Twitter or Facebook!