A 'tsunami' of store closings expected to hit retail

CNBC ^ | 1/22/2014 | Krystina Gustafson

[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.

[SeminoleCounty]

Free Trade doesn’t work...

You cannot have service jobs without manufacturing jobs

Made in China does not Make Jobs in America

[RegulatorCountry]

Ex-Texan had a real estate crash blog he was pimping and he was doing pretty well with the income from Google AdSense. I recall laughing at him because the algorithm was so flimsy that it had placed ads touting the wonders of Oregon real estate on there, he responded that he didn’t care because he was going to buy a villa in Tuscany, retire there and laugh. The runup fueled by bubble credit, legal laxity and fraud was bound to collapse, anyone with an ounce of sense saw it coming, those without a vested interest at least. But, then came the pop, the collapse was swift and sure in certain states and markets. The realistic fears turned into doomerism then in my opinion, more like piling on and compounding the misery. Cheering it on at that point was bad form, especially when fueled by a desire for personal gain.

[Grams A]

I know that I haven’t purchased anything except limited food and gas for the car since the middle of December. Property and MUD taxes, HOA dues, auto and homeowner’s insurance and all the utility bills due in January. Only so much to go around. These all have to be paid. All the other stuff is unnecessary.

[Trailerpark Badass]

The next good retail idea will be a store that sells washing machines/dishwashers that use enough hot water to get your things clean and soaps full of phosphates, and the CEO tells all all the environmentalists to go eff themselves.

[minnesota_bound]

I will give you 50%

Sincerely
Rick Harrison

[SatinDoll]

My Ebay seller name is: satindolz.

Gee, big surprise, huh?

[familyop]

The direction of our economy was decided around 1970 and since. Too much of us unsightly riff-raff breathing in public, you know. Have fun. Enjoy the slide.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Sears, Roebuck and Co was the original Amazon. Kind of ironic. Considering their roots you would have thought they would have been all over this interwebs thing.

[Vision]

A service economy services manufacturing.

[Colinsky]

Actually, the last bit that will hold together the 1%’ers house ‘o’ cards is massive quantities of peasants’ anesthetic:: sports Sports SPORTS!!!!! /It’s been going on for thousands of years:

..a new translation of a Mesopotamian clay tablet...a king assured that the citizens wouldn’t notice cuts in their food supply if they got lots of horse racing to keep their minds off their problems... This happened in 700 BC.

Here's another example:

Nero was emperor and for two weeks the mob had been rioting uncontrolled in the streets of Rome. The economy of the greatest empire the world had ever seen was coming apart like an unraveling sweater.

The cost of maintaining Rome's gigantic armed forces, equipped with the latest catapults, ballistae, and fast war galleys, was bleeding the nation white and in addition there were the heavy subsidies that had to be paid to the satellite nations dependent on Rome for support. The impoverished government had neither the funds nor the power to stop the riots.

In this crisis, the Captain of the Shipping hurried by chariot to consult with the first tribune.

"The merchant fleet is in Egypt awaiting loading," he announced. "The ships can be loaded either with corn for the starving people or with the special sand used on the track for chariot races. Which shall it be?"

"Are you mad?" screamed the tribune. "The situation here has got out of control. The emperor's a lunatic, the army's on the edge of mutiny, and the people are dying of hunger. For the gods' sake, get the sand! We have to get their minds off their troubles!"

Soon special announcement was made by heralds that the finest chariot races on record would be held at the Circus Maximus. Three hundred pairs of gladiators would fight to the death and twelve hundred condemned criminals would be eaten by lions. Fights between elephants and rhinos, buffalo and tigers, and leopards and wild boars would be staged. As a special feature, twenty beautiful young girls would be raped by jackasses. Admission to the rear seats, free. Small charge for the first 36 tiers of seats.

Everything else was promptly forgotten. The gigantic stadium, seating 385,000 people, was jammed to capacity. For two weeks the games went on while the crowd cheered, made bets, and got drunk. Once again the government had a breathing space to try to find some way out of its difficulties.

--Daniel P. Mannix, THOSE ABOUT TO DIE: The Full Truth About The Sadistic Roman "Games," 1958

[warchild9]

A quibble:

all the seating was free. One did have to pay for snacks, and the use of the bathrooms.

One obtained the best seats according to social rank, with women getting the nosebleed seats.

I’ve been to several Roman sports stadia, and I can tell you—those seat really sucked.

[Chickensoup]

I had tried to find a complete well made copy of the Complete Winnie the Pooh and the complete poetry book to match with original drawings like the ones I have and looked everywhere. NADA.

Then I tried to touch base with the publisher. no way.

[Chickensoup]

I get 50 lbs of sugar through local distributor a lot less expensively than that.

[Chickensoup]

The next good retail idea will be a store that sells washing machines/dishwashers that use enough hot water to get your things clean and soaps full of phosphates, and the CEO tells all all the environmentalists to go eff themselves.

_____________

And no electronics!

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

THE SHIFT TO E-COMMERCE. REPEAT. THIS HAS NOTBING TO DO WITH OBAMACARE. LONG LIVE COMRADE OBAMA.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-— I haven’t made a sale on Ebay since the first week in December -—

Sorry to hear that. Our eBay sales nose-dived in October. Wait until Obamacare kicks in for everyone.

[SamAdams76]

Did you also go through the Compaq and then HP transition? That must have been a fun ride.

[SamAdams76]

But I really lament that their business model drove all of the Mom&Pop newstands out of business

Why? Mom & Pop stores were awful. I have no nostalgia for them whatsoever.

[SamAdams76]

How in the heck can they make any money if someone orders 50 lbs of sugar with free shipping?

I don't think that happens all too often. Who would need 50 lbs of sugar? I think it takes a year or two for my household to go through a 5 pound sack.

[SamAdams76]

By the early seventies the market saturation point had been reached and our company of four hundred was history.

I think your timeline is off. Shopping malls were being built at a frenetic pace all the way through the 1980s. They were popping up everywhere. During that decade, teen culture revolved around the shopping mall. In those pre-Internet days, teens would congregate there to socialize. And none of them had cell phones to text with!