Is anyone here working on a business that's not tech/saas/ecommerce/whatever?

I am thinking of opening a brick and mortar. I feel like there's a lot of general sentiment about how Amazon and the other giant ecommerce sites are falling down the enshittification hole.

For example, Amazon used to have top-notch CS, but now I have had to contact on a couple issues over the holiday and I was straight up lied to multiple times about the same issue. No hyperbole here. "You'll get a refund for this, thanks for contacting amazon have a good day please give a good rating" and no refund comes. This happened in 3 separate CS chats, all with the same result. I eventually got my refund by escalating to executive resolutions (e-mailing andy/jeff) It sounds like my experience is by no means isolated and Amazon CS agents lying about resolutions is becoming incredibly common.

I get the general sense just reading about these things that people are getting sick of the bad service and the coin toss of if your item shows up in good condition or has been previously opened.

In my hobby, there's a growing trend of people buying locally, but at giant retailers who don't have the flexibility to adapt to new trends or customer demand. I think being a small, agile brick and mortar could be a good business model if you can drive the foot traffic. I think about fast trends, stuff on tiktok that blows up quickly that larger retailers don't have the hope of keeping up with since merchandise planning takes months or years - whereas a small footprint operation you're talking about the speed of air freight or at worst sea freight.

Beyond that, while B&M is by no means a low overhead business, FBM fees are ridiculous and I can't really see how you make a profit that way anymore, 3PLs are not much better, and self-shipping rates are higher and higher every day.

Online ordering with in-person pickup is also a great method of fulfillment that reduces friction but eliminates shipping costs.

Anyway, just wanted to put that out there. Thoughts? Am I crazy?