In the two thousands, entering retail meant having a future.
You started as a sales assistant, became a visual merchandiser, store manager, area manager, and one day – with tenacity – retail director or even local CEO.
It was a meritocratic, human, visible path.
Today that dream no longer exists.
Not for lack of talent, but because it has been dismantled piece by piece by a system that no longer believes in the value of people.
1. From the dream to the algorithm
Retail used to be theater and craft.
Today it is system and control.
Companies no longer look for charismatic leaders, but dashboard executors.
Once, the retail director motivated and created culture; today they must simply meet KPIs, schedules, budgets, and modules.
Decisions come from headquarters, and stores have become satellites of the corporate office, no longer worlds unto themselves.
2. The CEO became too expensive
A local CEO cost – and still costs – between 250,000 and 1 million euros a year in salary, bonuses, stock options, and benefits.
A “Retail Director” or “Country Manager,” on the other hand, costs a third of that, but manages the same territory with less autonomy and more top-down control.
Fewer executives, more middle managers.
Less vision, more numbers.
3. Finance has seized power
After the 2008 crisis, the axis of wealth shifted from real production to finance.
Investors no longer want visions; they want profitable quarterly reports.
For this reason, the figure of the “visionary” CEO became dangerous: too free, too expensive, too human.
The new model is distributed leadership, controlled by boards and funds, where every decision is filtered through KPIs, margins, and forecasts.
4. Digital has stripped away the human charm
The store is no longer the heart of the experience: it is just one of the touchpoints.
The customer buys online, tries on in store, and picks up elsewhere.
Those who work in retail are no longer brand ambassadors: they are a human service point in an automated chain.
The most human job in the world has become the work of an emotional robot.
5. Power has returned to headquarters
Global brands have eliminated local CEOs and reduced the autonomy of national directors.
Everything – visual merchandising, training, pricing, campaigns – is decided in Paris, London, or Milan.
Local retail directors are now budget managers, no longer market strategists.
In exchange, average salaries are between 80,000 and 150,000 euros, with bonuses tied only to numerical performance.
6. Careers have stalled
Today, a young sales assistant or beauty advisor can work for ten years without ever getting a real promotion.
In many cases, they perform the duties of a store manager, visual merchandiser, or trainer, without the role being formally or financially recognized.
Responsibilities grow, but the title remains the same.
The system has adapted this way: fluid roles, static salaries, invisible hierarchies.
An imposed flexibility that has erased the very concept of a career.
The average salary remains stuck at 1,500–1,800 euros, while the cost of living explodes.
Middle positions are saturated, top positions are locked down, and “talent growth” programs are HR window dressing.
“Work hard, but don’t expect to grow.”
7. Retail has been industrialized
Retail has been transformed into a production process.
Companies still talk about the “human experience,” but they manage staff like an assembly line.
Flexible roles, undefined titles, diffuse responsibilities: everyone does more jobs than their contract recognizes.
A sales assistant becomes a visual merchandiser, trainer, cashier manager, and team motivator — without ever changing level or pay grade.
The system rests on this structural discrepancy between function and recognition: those who know how to do more end up working more, but not earning more.
The model is that of factories: standards, shifts, procedures, indicators.
Only today the factory has perfumes, lights, and golden logos.
Aesthetics serve to mask an industrial reality: precision work without freedom, performed by professionals who can no longer call themselves such.
8. From craft to service
The experienced salesperson, the sensitive visual merchandiser, the passionate director are no longer enough.
They need “someone who can handle the pressure,” someone who “makes the numbers,” someone who “doesn’t create problems.”
Retail has stopped producing careers and started producing staff turnover.
The dream of “making it” in the luxury world has dissolved:
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There are no more places at the top.
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Brands have become conglomerates.
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Human roles are replaceable.
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The career dream has become a fixed-cost dream.
9. The truth behind the words
Companies continue to talk about leadership, empowerment, inclusion.
But behind the claims, the truth is simple:
they look for someone who costs little, who doesn’t ask for space, who keeps morale high while everything contracts.
And those who believed in retail as a life path today find themselves managing the end of an era.
10. What remains to be done
Retail is not dead: it has closed in on itself.
It has lost the ability to recognize the human value that keeps it alive.
Today the challenge is no longer to “reinvent yourself,” but to redefine what a skill is truly worth.
Rebuilding the craft means restoring visibility to forgotten roles, recognizing the complexity of those working on the ground, and rebalancing the relationship between function and compensation.
The future of the sector will not depend on new platforms or digital strategies, but on the ability to attribute economic and symbolic dignity to real work.
Those who have lived this system from the inside can only transform it if they stop submitting to it:
by taking their experience beyond the boundaries of the store, into the places where the new market is designed — consulting, training, research, work culture.
Because a career is no longer a ladder: it is an archive of skills to be reassembled, to build fairer, clearer, truer systems.
11. In-depth: stores are empty
Stores are truly empty, not only physically but also in an economic, social, and psychological sense.
Places of commerce have become display surfaces, no longer spaces of relationship.
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In Italy in 2024, physical retail sales fell by −7.8% (source: Federdistribuzione 2025).
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In shopping centers, the average footfall is 30% lower than in 2019.
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Fashion brands are closing “flagship” stores and investing only in temporary or pop-up stores.
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The only sector showing slight growth is luxury perfumery, driven by tourism.
The store, once a place of storytelling and belonging, has been reduced to a conversion channel.
🖤 SRDN.SOCIETY POV
SRDN.SOCIETY was born to document the collapse of these systems and, after having traversed them from the inside, to rebuild them in a human and intelligent way.
The goal is to apply what has been learned from the old models to the new markets and new work cultures, accepting that today no one invests in relationships anymore, but in induced needs:
in dependence on rents, leases, and permanent subscriptions.
Not out of nostalgia, but to restore meaning and direction to the experience —
before retail becomes merely an architectural memory of consumption.