One in four online orders now runs through a physical store.

On May 16, The Container Store opened a co-branded store with Bed Bath & Beyond in Fort Worth, Texas. New signage. New layout. Bed Bath & Beyond merchandise inside an existing Container Store footprint. The brand returned to American retail without leasing a single property.

Three days earlier in Bloomington, Minnesota, Ariat confirmed it will open its largest store anywhere on Earth at Mall of America in 2026. 10,500 square feet. Bigger than the brand's Las Vegas flagship. The address is not Madison Avenue or Ginza. It is a 1990s super-regional mall in suburban Minneapolis.

Two weeks before that, Macerich paid $272 million for Annapolis Mall in Maryland. Most of the cheque was for leases that have not opened yet.

Three different store openings. Three different definitions of "store."

Three signals on what the store now does.

Colliers' Spring 2026 Retail Report puts the share of US retail sales still flowing through stores at 85.1 percent. That figure is the wrong place to look for disruption. The disruption is inside what the store does while those sales happen.

One in four online orders is now fulfilled inside a physical store. The forecast for 2030 is 35.4 percent. BOPIS revenue is 8.9 percent of total retail, up 71 percent year over year. Seventy-one percent of US retailers grew their footprint in 2026.

Retailers in the top performance cohort grew IT spending 52 percent over five years. Slower-moving peers grew 13 percent. Macy's says customers using its AI shopping assistant spend approximately four times more than other customers.

The store is not what e-commerce competes with. The store is what e-commerce runs on.

The Container Store launched a nationwide reset across 98 stores on April 24. On May 16, the first co-branded store opened in Fort Worth: The Container Store + Bed Bath & Beyond. Beyond Inc. confirmed the integration via investor disclosure. The agreement covers all 98 Container Store locations.

This is the first physical retail presence for the relaunched Bed Bath & Beyond brand since the original chain closed its stores in 2023. The brand did not return by building a standalone store network. It entered The Container Store's existing footprint, lease structure, and operating envelope. New product mix. New signage. Same lease.

Wayfair is moving from the opposite direction. The digital-native home retailer confirmed a 130,000 square foot Cincinnati store for 2027. Same I-71 corridor, design services, immediate-takeaway inventory. One legacy brand returns through another retailer's shell. One online retailer builds a large-format physical shell of its own. Both point to the same pressure: home retail needs physical infrastructure.

Bed Bath & Beyond did not reopen 98 stores. It entered 98 retail shells.

ICSC Las Vegas runs through May 20. The early floor consensus, as framed by CommercialSearch and Marcus & Millichap reports timed to opening day, is short-term holds and long-term visions. Marcus & Millichap brought single-tenant retail to the center of the conversation with new reports released for the event. The message: predictable retail formats are being treated as premium income assets.

The publicly priced benchmark behind that consensus is Macerich's $272 million acquisition of Annapolis Mall on May 6. Centennial Real Estate and Atlas Hill RE held the mall 21 months. They bought it for $160 million in August 2024, signed 353,000 square feet of new tenants, and sold to Macerich for roughly 70 percent more than the 2024 purchase price.

The signed-not-open pipeline includes Dick's House of Sport at 116,000 square feet, Dave & Buster's, Tesla, Uniqlo, lululemon expansion, OFFLINE by Aerie, Abercrombie, Pop Mart, Jack & Jones. None of these tenants is open yet. All of them are priced into the deal. The yield rises from 9.2 percent on current NOI to 10.5 percent when the signed-not-open leases are included.

ICSC's own Q1 2026 data: $19 billion in retail real estate transaction volume, strongest first quarter in 10 years.

The mall is no longer only a real estate asset held to stabilize. It is a tenant pipeline held to deliver.

→ Ariat International, Mall of America. 10,500 square feet. The brand's largest store anywhere on Earth, opening 2026. Bigger than the Las Vegas flagship. Western workwear placed in the same flagship category as Bond Street luxury. Watching the leasing terms and whether other category-defining American brands follow into the same property.

→ Aventura Mall Kuwait. Alshaya Group signed a 20-store anchor deal with developer Mabanee for opening Q3 2026. Inside the deal: Primark's first Kuwait store, Ulta Beauty's second international market after Mexico, Raising Cane's, Chipotle. Four first-to-market entries in one franchisee package. The Western mall industry distributes risk across tenants. The GCC concentrates it into a single operating franchisee.

→ Aéropostale Recess Revival Tour at four Simon malls. Sawgrass Mills, The Domain, Mall of Georgia, Roosevelt Field. Simon Property Group publishing editorial copy about Gen Z and "the mall as more than a place to shop." The largest US REIT is now treating brand activation as proof-of-concept for its own mall traffic thesis. Watching whether the tour converts into permanent leases at any of the four properties.

→ Disney Store Limited Time, Ross Park Mall. Scheduled to open May 23. First operational data window runs through June 22. Watching queues, merchandise mix, and whether Disney frames the format as a store, a pop-up, or an IP retail test.

→ NoLi Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. Michael Comras adaptive reuse of a five-building assemblage on Lincoln Road. 150,000 square feet. Q4 2027 delivery. Retail retrofit envelope as a third geometry alongside destination envelope (Oakridge) and flow envelope (transit-hub retail). Watching first tenant signings.

None of this is "retail is back."

That line is too small.

The store is becoming the operating layer of retail: fulfillment node, trust layer, service point, showroom, return desk, and data source.

That is why retailers still need space. That is why Bed Bath & Beyond can return through 98 shells it does not own. That is why Ariat is opening its largest store anywhere in a Minnesota mall. That is why Macerich is paying for leases that have not opened yet.

The next cycle will not be measured by store count.

It will be measured by what the store is now built to do.

Mati
Editor, Malls Money

Malls.com covers retail expansion across 50+ countries. We will be at Shoptalk Europe, June 9-11, Fira Gran Via, Barcelona.

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