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As one of the owners, Ed Savenye, surveys his 3,000-square-foot palace of vinyl discs and CDs in the 400 block of West Hastings Street, he can see a couple of them looking through the containers of LPs. When one asks for help, Savenye leaps into action.

But Savenye, who became a partner in the store with long-time employee Roger Scobie in 2001, readily acknowledged during an in-store interview with the Georgia Straight that there are fewer of these customers than in its predigital heyday.

At the heart of his concern on wholesale suppliers in this day is Amazon, a Seattle-based e-commerce giant that generated US$177.9 billion in revenue last year.

That’s up from US$61 billion five years ago. This year, the behemoth founded by former Wall Street executive Jeff Bezos, now the richest CEO in the world, is on track to top US$200 billion in sales. Amazon’s success has had a devastating impact on booksellers and record-store owners.

“For the sake of time and just a couple of bucks, a lot of our customer base just simply walked away,” Savenye said wistfully.

As a result of declining sales, Sikora’s will close at the end of February after 40 years in business. It’s one of a multitude of local businesses that have been felled by rapid transformations in retail.

Shortly before Christmas, the Comicshop at 3518 West 4th Avenue announced that it will be shutting down after 44 years in business.

Last year, HMV Canada called it quits. Ingledew’s, a century-old Vancouver shoe business, also folded in 2017. After 82 years in business, two Umbrella Shops were shuttered. Nicole Bridger closed her eponymous Gastown designer wholesale clothing china business, shifting to online orders and pop-up shops.

Savenye worries that the list of local retailing fatalities will grow, undermining community connections and severing long-standing friendships between shopkeepers and their customers.

It’s not just Amazon that’s gobbling up local shopping dollars. There are many other foreign-owned digital platforms, including Wayfair, Etsy, and Alibaba, that are having an impact on different retail sectors.

Savenye predicted that within a couple of decades, many suburban malls will have to close—or be converted into “fulfillment centres”. That’s Amazon-speak for its massive distribution facilities, which will be increasingly reliant on robots and artificial intelligence in the years to come.

“You’re looking at a bunch of minimum-wage monkeys running around in an Amazon warehouse packing cardboard boxes—that is the future of retail,” Savenye said. “It isn’t pretty.”

He didn’t blame his landlord for the looming closure of Sikora’s—in fact, he had nothing but praise for the building owner’s efforts to help the store survive. Instead, Savenye focused on the “five Ds” that have eroded his business: downsizing, digitization, distribution, desertion, and demise.

People living in smaller apartments—including empty-nesters who have downsized by selling their houses—don’t have enough space to house large record collections. The second D, digitization, has enabled former customers to download music from online sites and listen to streaming services.

This has transformed the third D, distribution, as wholesalers focus more on these areas rather than moving physical products to stores. That, in turn, has led customers to desert Sikora’s in favour of online services.

Finally, there’s the demise of his older customer base. He noted that if someone started visiting Sikora’s at the age of 48 back in 1979, this person would be in their late 80s today.

“Do they even need to buy any more classical music?” Saveyne asked. “And let’s be blunt: are they still with us? Or have they passed away?”