Distribution is key to getting our products and services to customers. But what if the distribution venues threaten our continued success as much as they promote it? These are the problems we face with the mammoth malls

that entice large crowds and conveniently offer a wide range of products. What if these establishments threaten our trade by refusing to continue handling our product and/or service? We should relocate right away no doubt.

If you manufacture your products on your own, there should be no problem. Leave retailing to the big players, right? But what if you are trading and importing your wares? Your retailer, who is large by any measure, can do just as the malls and replace you overnight. What to do in a situation like this?

In the old days (before the malls), we had niche stores that catered to specific products. The mom and pop stores or groceries, the corner drug store, the dirty hardware shops, metal manufacturing by design, tire stores, furniture stores, etc . . . The malls killed the smaller operators and new players who supported the malls prospered. Closing down the small enterprises has had a chilling effect on the economy from the standpoint of commerce equitability.

Regulation lags in its ability to identify the threat these malls have on the entrepreneur. On the other side of the coin, however, over the last decade, we have the birth of new players who have succeeded with imports from China because of the malls.

This article is not about the dissipation of the commerce we are experiencing. It is about the threat and consequences the success of malls has for the future. The saying “don’t fight city hall or you’ll never win against the village bully” comes to mind. And yet we rush to these malls to present our innovations, our unique selling propositions, and our new product lines. We invest our hard earned funds only to be copied and, eventually, replaced.

Gee, we’ll bet you thought only banks worked that way. Philippine banks are not partners and neither are the malls. They entice us to present everything we know and, when satisfied, they ask us to invest our own funds to promote our products and services—and then kick us out when something else comes along. Can there be regulation to protect us? Is this really fair trade? Or is it simply capitalism to the nth degree?