How the tech winter will affect retail

The Future. As crypto suffers, tech stocks continue to fall, and the layoffs continue, it’s starting to look like the tech boom of the past two decades might be coming to a close. The correction will force retail to pivot, but it also provides the industry with new opportunities moving forward.

Baby it’s cold outside
Forbes analyzed the many ways in which the economic environment has grown more hostile to tech.

• Meta has poured $35B into the Metaverse, but even its own employees won’t use it, and sales of VR headsets dropped 2% last year.
• Widespread use of the Metaverse appears to be at least years away, not least because VR simply can’t beat the ease and efficiency of navigating the digital world on a mobile phone.
• And with the crypto winter setting in, along with the implosion of FTX, it’s hard to see how the NFT hype machine could continue to function at its previous levels.
• Lack of investment interest in these areas is even more significant because there’s more available uninvested capital than ever. Many startups based in crypto, NFTs, and the Metaverse are seen as risky investments in a downturn, and likely won’t get funded until economic times are good. For retailers, this lack of reliability is a red flag.

Silver linings
The good news for retail is that there are tons of newly unemployed tech workers who understand tech, digital marketing, and the process of turning a product into a platform. The chances of hitting it really big in this sphere are low, but retailers looking to broaden their portfolio or merely bulk up their digital presence can do it more cheaply than ever, thanks to the glut of tech talent looking for work.