Posted on 01/22/2014 1:59:17 PM PST by EBH
Get ready for the next era in retail—one that will be characterized by far fewer shops and smaller stores.
On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It's the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy's.
Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700 empty positions.
Experts said these headlines are only the tip of the iceberg for the industry, which is set to undergo a multiyear period of shuttering stores and trimming square footage.
Shoppers will likely see an average decrease in overall retail square footage of between one-third and one-half within the next five to 10 years, as a shift to e-commerce brings with it fewer mall visits and a lesser need to keep inventory stocked in-store, said Michael Burden, a principal with Excess Space Retail Services.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Yeah; I mainly shop online and with a little research, the stuff at the mainstream stores are boring, repetitive, and are certainly not good quality.
There building the largest mall in Florida in Sarasota….I wonder if they can fill it??? Stores will probably close in the older malls
“It was more expensive in the store and when I questioned the price I was told it cost too much to stock so that is why the price online is less. I did end up getting it for the online price but I had to push for it.”
Best Buy pretty much makes up random excuses about the pricing differential. They’ll also price match their own online prices, though they’ll often grouse about it.
Best bet at Best Buy is to walk in and ask right off the bat if they’ll price match their online prices without saying what you want to buy and look like you’re about to flee if they won’t. They’ve always matched when I’ve made that approach.
Actually, our Best Buy will price match ANY legitimate competitor’s price in their entertainment electronics area.
There's no reason to buy merchandise locally. Most of it is pawed over and in those large stores shopping isn't even fun. All of the merchandise is the same anyway, just with different labels. What's the point of having local merchandise if the stores don't sell unique hand-crafted merchandise that I can't get online?
Yeah, but look on the bright side.
The private patrol business is going to be booming as is the barrier/security wall building and gate construction business. Also, instead of hiring more union cops, you and your neighbors can patrol your own neighborhoods.
Who knows? Maybe the Committees of Vigilance will come back into fashion!
Yet they keep building more! I don't understand why you see so much new retail space being built and so much vacate retail space. What a waste of resources.
I noticed that since Xmas the local Barnes & Noble has stopped carrying a LOT of periodicals that I happen to like and would regularly buy from them.
They’re also dedicating a LOT more space to non-book items like toys and games.
I understand that the advent of eBooks, etc, has really messed with their business model. But I really lament that their business model drove all of the Mom&Pop newstands out of business (and I patronized those Mom&Pops up to the point where I could only find the magazines I was interested in elsewhere).
It’s probably too much to hope for a resurgence in the small and niche local retailer segment ...
We’re just copying China’s ghost cities and keeping people working. Consider it the new ditch digger job!
I was at a Books a Million at Christmas and finding the actual BOOKS...was confusing to the say the least. Lots of toys and such for the kids. I recall pondering ...
Where did imagination go?
So much for the Consumer driven recovery. Because of ObamaCare, we have $8K less discretionary income this year.
Retail is not the "service economy". It is a necessary part of the wealth-creating economy.
Retail creates wealth by storing inventory in quantities too large for the consumer. Its profit is made by permitting the consumer to buy what he needs when he wants without the expense of buying and storing pallets of it in a warehouse.
Online shopping.
It started long ago but the acceleration is picking up. I truly believe that NOTHING short of divine intervention will stop a collapse of the US economy. I hope that I live long enough to see tar, feathers and gallows put to use.
“We can get you a chicom counterfeit for only 499.99... but no warranty and no paperwork”.
Small business is dying... when it goes... everything collapses.
The knockout game isn’t helping retail, either.
The great irony being that Sears and Roebuck started as a mail order business, quickly becoming the Amazon of its day, with Montgomery Ward following suit.
In the mid to late sixties, when the enclosed shopping malls became the model, mall developers wooed the big department stores as the anchors, counting on that customer draw to feed the smaller. retail tenants. At one time the A&E firm I worked for designed these anchor store shells and cores. Base line time frame was ninety days or less from signing of contract to core and shell construction completion. By the early seventies the market saturation point had been reached and our company of four hundred was history. I had seen it coming and left six months before the collapse. The Macy’s, Gimbels, Sears, and Federated Stores were all over extended at that time and had been limping along since. A herd of aging and weakened elephants on a slow trek to oblivion.
I personally find some schadenfreude in the fact that the same big retail chains that had everything to do with starting the race to the bottom for the US labor market by pushing for free trade are now getting buggered themselves by etailers.
It’s no comfort at all in that the collapse of traditional retail is going to put a whole slew of people out of work. Without any real industry or wealth production to support the retail and housing booms, they were going to die-off sooner or later anyway.
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