What has more value: all major publicly traded department stores in the United States, or Amazon?

As Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins illustrates, Amazon takes the cake, and its no contest.

Add together the market caps of Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, JCPenney, Sears, and Macy’s, and they amount to a significant $297.8 billion.

However, it’s not enough to beat the Amazon machine.

The online retailer alone is worth $356 billion, making it one of the largest companies by market capitalization in the world.

THE DEATH OF TRADITIONAL RETAIL

Ten years ago, the future of brick and mortar retail sill looked bright. The aforementioned retailers were worth a collective $400 billion, and Amazon was only valued at $17.5 billion.

But disruption often comes without warning. Or if there were warning signs, they went unheeded by retailers.

Big box and department store sales plummeted, as consumers increasingly went online to do their shopping. This year, it is estimated that revenues are equal to just 62% of their totals in 2006:

Retailers without the right strategy saw their market caps plummet.

Sears went from being worth $27.8 billion to $1.1 billion (a 96% decrease), while JCPenney went from $18.1 billion to $2.6 billion (a 86% decrease).

Amazon, on the other hand, did okay for itself.

The online retailer gained 1,934% in value over the same timeframe, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world, and a key piece of Jeff Bezos’ business empire.