It may make for intriguing headlines, but physical retail is clearly not dead. Rather far from it, in fact. So don't believe the hype or fall for the clickbait.

To be sure, boring, undifferentiated, irrelevant and unremarkable stores are most definitely dead, dying or moving perilously close to the  edge of the precipice . While retail is going through vast disruption, causing many stores to close and many malls to undergo radical transformation or bulldozing, the reality is that, at least in the U.S., shopping in physical stores continues to grow, albeit at a far slower pace than online. And in an inconvenient truth to those pushing the "retail apocalypse" narrative, physical store openings actually grew  by more than 50%  year over year. Much of this is driven by the hyper-growth of dollar stores and the off-price channel, but there is also significant growth on the part of decidedly more upscale specialty stores and the move of digitally-native brands like Warby Parker and Bonobos into brick and mortar .