Stand on a corner in Waikiki and you can sometimes see two ABC Stores at once.
Not two stores in the same neighborhood. Two stores within sight of each other, selling almost exactly the same things.
Every textbook on retail site selection says this is a mistake. You are supposed to space locations out so they do not steal each other’s customers. The industry even has a word for the failure: cannibalization.
ABC Stores has been doing it on purpose for sixty years.
And once you understand who walks past that corner, it stops looking like a mistake and starts looking like one of the sharpest pieces of retail strategy in America.