Posted on 01/24/2020 6:33:57 AM PST by vespa300
Brick-and-mortar retail took another hit this week when Bed Bath & Beyond announced it will shutter 40 stores this year, including four Southern California locations that have already closed.
All of the stores on the list, spread throughout 19 states, are expected to close within the next six months, the New Jersey-based company said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
They had their profit margin set way too high. They stepped on their own toes with overpricing their products.
Store in Utah has already been closed for 3-4 months.
[Hard to survive out there. One of the best is Hubert Joly. He has helped to save Best Buy so far.]
Not sure who or what is to blame, but it’s not the same store. I typically go in once a year. I’m not a shopper, but at Christmas, BB&B was always a good stop for ideas and just general browsing.
This year, the store was not quite as full of merchandise. A lot less of the sharper image type of gizmos and gadgets. It had the feel of a store that was selling out to close down.
The local DICK’S is in a WalMart strip mall and rarely has more than 4 cars in the lot at any given time, even less since their stupid gun politics hit.
For reasons no one can fathom, they just bought the abandoned SEARS building at the mall and are building an even bigger store.
They must be crazy.
McCrory’s had all that *and* pets.
I know where that store is. Glad they’re not closing it...not that I travel way over there, often :-)
I order most of my BB&B (kitchen items, mostly) online.
When Tervis glasses first become popular, I remember BB&B was THE place to get all of the different styles.
Oh, yeah. I remember McCrory’s. They had lizards. Also JJ Newbury’s.
The malls have pandered to politically correct causes for years, now people have alternatives and can avoid them altogether. They could chase off the panhandlers and gangsta wannabies but in many locations they have chosen not to and the merchants have paid the price.
There’s plenty of “blame” to go around, but most of it lies with B,B&B.
Their stores have been a total trainwreck for the last five or six years. Aisles are way too narrow, displays are a hodge-podge, and who the heck buys scented candles for the price for which they’re selling them at B, B&B???
And yet, why is the Apple Store always crowded when I go there?
I could buy Apple products online or at Best Buy.
Only if you're the property owner of a stand alone store...maybe. Enclosed and strip mall stores are leased and infill stores depend/depended on foot traffic generated by the big magnet stores anchored at far ends and maybe middles of enclosed malls. Chain department stores seem to be the hardest hit by web sales. Their reduced attraction means much lower overall foot traffic so mid size and smaller stores suffer proportionately, often stuck with high lease rates.
Locally Bed, Bath, and Beyond has been pushing out mailers with 20% discounts at a very high rate for years now and honoring the discounts well pasted the published expiry dates. Can't keep that tactic up for long once customer perceive that store ticket prices are inflated and meaningless.
I'm seeing this across the board with publicly-traded American companies, from Bed, Bath, & Beyond to Boeing. In my business, we are even seeing it coming from a long-trusted wholesale supplier in Canada - which was recently purchased by a large, publicly-traded American company.
Wall Street demands its quarterly earnings targets be hit consistently...or else.
Private companies can't often afford big mall rents (nearly impossible to do without an offshore supply chain allowing a 10X or more price markup) so you have to go to smaller centers for your local shopping. Most big malls are doomed - they can't lower their rents because they still have huge mortgages so they prefer to keep spaces empty, claim they can't find tenants, and get a tax deduction. But long halls full of empty spaces turn off shoppers, attract local thugs, and lead to an unstoppable downward spiral.
We had shopped (note “Had Shopped:) at a BBB store for over a decade. There was one that was close to the Costco, we went to once a month.
About 2 years ago, basically anything my wife wanted from them needed to be ordered on line by the store or us.
So we by passed the middle man,the store and went directly on line.
Our local Pier One had good employees and terrible inventory at the store. They would spend up to a half an hour trying to get a neighboring store to send what we wanted.
Their neighboring store demanded that we drive to their store or pay extra for them to ship to us.
My wife wanted 2 lamps to replace old ones. After we wasted a half hour with the above bs at our local store, we said no thank you.
We came home and went on line and got the 2 lamps delivered for free in a couple of days at a significant savings.
This store will be closing.
Large malls have not aged well. I wonder about the air quality in them - germs galore.
Most germs die of old age in a short time.
Some viruses and/or mold last for ever if the air filters and mall are not cleaned regularly.
Of course the teen thugs, who live in and terrorize their malls, become adult criminals. Their mall becomes their hunting ground.
Adios and Amazon here we come.
Yes. Part of the reason they could have everything, is that the packaging was minimal. I did love Woolworth’s, or the “Five and Dime” places.
Interesting of the 19 state closing stores, 13 of them are liberal controlled states. I’m assuming taxes and fees are part of the equation.
rwood
Interesting of the 19 state closing stores, 13 of them are liberal controlled states. I’m assuming taxes and fees are part of the equation.
rwood
Went to all those back in the day downtown Hagerstown was not Dodge City, before the mall came.
Kresge’s, too.
Our McCrory’s had fish, birds, rats, mice, hamsters and all the stuff that went with them.
Loved that place....naturally. :D
It’s odd.
120 years ago people were fulminating about the exact same ‘death of Main street’ due to Sears.
The more things change...
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