Brick-And-Mortar!

In the seemingly incomprehensible jargon of eCommerce, there's a term called Brick-And-Mortar. The term is used to describe a traditional business that choses to construct a physical storefront in order to sell their merchandise or services.

Most businesses still chose to believe that these Brick-And-Mortar establishments are the best ways to distribute music, movies, music videos, and video games. Several companies have taken the initiative already and launched products set on proving this ideal false.






Exhibit A


As of January 2007, Apple's iTunes Store has sold more than 2 billion songs, accounting for more than 80% of worldwide online digital music sales. To date, it has also sold more than 2 million movies, making it the world's most popular online movie store.


Exhibit B


In order to curtail future distribution abuses from companies like Vivendi (formerly Vivendi Universal) Valve creates their own distributing software, which they call Steam, in order to sell their games directly to consumers.


While Valve's example is not as prominent, or successful, as Apple's, they both go a long way to show the direction digital mediums will be taking in the future. The internet is profitable. The internet will always be profitable. Traditional mindsets need to be abandoned when thinking about commerce in the twenty-first century. Downloading music, games, movies, or anything else that can be converted into a digital format will always be cheaper for the producer and the consumer.

So while 'brick-and-mortar' installations will always need to be around for certain types of products, internet sites and programs like iTunes are paving the way for faster and cheaper commerce in the future.