Stewart Powell started working in retail the same way many people do:
"My parents made me get a job," recalls Powell. "I was in high school and they were tired of footing the bill for everything I was doing so they said go get a job, and there was a job available here."
That's Linn & Owen Jewelers on Washington Square in Lansing. He stuck with that job through high school and college, and eventually bought the store.
Now more than 40 years later, he's seeing retail in pain.
"It's tough," Powell explains, "we're going through a trend, we're going through cultural changes, we have economic changes, there are so many new things happening."
That trend is online shopping according to Tom Scott of the Michigan Retailers Association, which has forced chain department stores to close their doors across the country, and in mid-Michigan.
"We have seen sales down in some department stores, and even some malls too are--not all of them--but some of them, especially the older ones," Scott says.
It isn't the first time Powell has seen trends hurting the industry, he says the Sears catalog shook retail when he first came into the field.
Stores survived then, and Powell is optimistic they'll survive this too:
"I think that people will eventually come back to bring and mortar, there are things that are here to enjoy that you can't experience without it. The interaction, the experience, it's just different."
MSU economics professor Charles Ballard says part of why this trend has been successful is because it's so easy.
But Powell doesn't think that's enough:
"Modern always brings quicker and easier, but that doesn't always mean it's better."
He says only time will tell what happens, but he's hopeful it will make a comeback.
