Boise (670 KBOI News) – As we told you last week, all area Shopko stores are closing, because the entire company is going out of business. Also last week, San Francisco-based Gymboree announced it was closing all of its stores.

This comes on the heels of K-Mart, Toys R Us and other big retailers declaring bankruptcy, and Sears narrowly escaping…so does that mean online retail is killing brick and mortar?

No, says NNU economist Dr. Peter Crabb…in fact, online retail sites like Amazon are actually helping some retailers.

“Individual retailers are quickly popping up on Amazon as well, just using the Amazon platform to sell their products,” said Crabb.  “Those same companies are likely to have brick and mortar stores in their regular locations.”

He says some people will always want to try on, or try out what they’re shopping for before they buy it, so there’ll always be a need for brick and mortar, especially for custom or specialized goods.