Posted on 01/09/2017 2:58:45 AM PST by expat_panama
Sears. Macy's. Kohl's. Traditional department store retailers have taken hard hits over the Christmas holidays, with sales lagging the generally robust performance of retailers overall. Now, these mall stalwarts are slashing thousands of jobs and hundreds of stores, trying to right-size themselves. It's no coincidence.
Sears on Thursday became the latest retailer to announce that it was restructuring... ...Macy's is letting 10,000 people go. And Kohl's warned about its decline in sales over the holidays. Analysts expect Kohl's to announce cuts.
A few years back, it was discounter Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer on earth, announcing it was closing 100 stores.
What's going on here? In a word, Amazon.com.
The online e-retailing giant has become a dominant force...
...as brutal as it sounds, this is actually a good thing... ...new generation of retailers is using technology to personalize the customer's buying experience and use artificial intelligence to compete on the web.
Sears will never be the same. Nor will the rest of the industry. And economic changes such as those experienced by our venerable high-end retailers aren't pleasant. But they usually are beneficial and even necessary, bringing new growth where there was none and offering new possibilities for workers and customers alike. So while we lament the nostalgic past, we should also embrace the possibilities of the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
/Just got Amazon Prime.
/Not sure I’ll ever leave the house again to shop.
Ha! Shop? Shoot. Prime has all the music and many of the movies & TV shows I want. If a show isn’t free on Prime, I can often pay $1.99 to watch it and I own it after that. No reason to go to the movies at the mall.
I haven’t ordered food from my local grocery because I’m only a few blocks away, but I used to do that in Seattle and could do it here if necessary.
I go to work and to church. Other than that, there’s no reason to leave the house. : )
#30 I buy my shirts from them as they are sturdier then the see thru shirts at the regular stores. Some of their shirts though have short shirt tails so they do not stay tucked in!
Also I hate shiny clothes. You know the kind that says they resist spills. I ain’t that clumsy that I need this. I recently bought what I thought was a green cotton shirt but got a shiny green shirt. I sent it back.
TIP: Buy from Amazon the poly bags to return stuff in. Cheap to buy there. The UPS / post office charges like $4.50 per bag.
Our daughter told us over Christmas that she was buying groceries thru Amazon Prime. We were like “What?”.
Now, I’m actually considering it.
We also got Amazon Fire for Christmas. I’m discovering the possibilities are yuge.
/Parking on *Main Streets USA* was impossibly hard
I live next to a university town for a Big Ten school. Apparently our nice in-town mall (now mostly home to university offices) had stores like Penney’s, but the holier-than-thou leftists didn’t want a lot of car traffic in town and limited the mall’s growth. Now the downtown has mostly student bars and a few decent restaurants. Unless it’s a game day, no one over 21 wants to hang out there.
About 19 years ago, the retailers moved out to the next town over (where I live) and built a big mall with plenty-o-parking. There are restaurants, hotels, and we have the mall. We’ll also be getting our area’s first Trader Joes this year - where I’m sure there will be lots of parking.
And when Walmart wanted to tear down its old store to build a superstore, the college town said ‘no.’ It’s so chic to hate Walmart, of course. So WM builds a superstore on county land, instead of city land, maybe a quarter mile from the old store. Way to lose tax revenue, idiots.
We’re in the middle of flyover country. Everyone has a car and a lot of people have SUVs and trucks. If you don’t make shopping easy for people with vehicles, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
Exactly. Our porch was field stone.
The problem with sizing being all over the place and what some called vanity sizing is simple. It is happening with men’s clothes now for nearly 10 years also. American retailers are pushing cheap dollar store goods with Asian sizing on Americans. If anyone has traveled in Japan or a similar place then one would realize how much smaller people are and that there is no shortage of inferior quality products made for cheap 10 dollar and under stores with stuff mostly from China. It is this kind of stuff that these companies are now offering Americans and the stores deserve to lose and even close down if they insist on such a tragically idiotic trajectory and business model.
Here in New England, and specifically Connecticut, we have a few towns that have retained their old-fashioned look and feel of small stores [mom & pops] that give terrific service; Main Street. But they are few and far between. And I’m sure the shop keepers struggle of those that are left.
One thing I noticed is, the more successful towns, secured land behind the store fronts for free parking; you can enter the store from a *back door* off the parking lot. The towns of West Hartford and Manchester have done that. Brattleboro and Manchester, Vermont have retained their Main Streets.
I moved away from Chester, Deep River, Essex area a decade ago. The town I moved to, had no *small* hardware store; only the box stores. I was stuck; all I wanted was a simple *S* hook. The nice enough clerk in Home Depot, couldn’t find them. 45 minutes of hiking around with him, I left, disappointed, without my silly hooks. I happened to be near *Deep Chessex* [as I fondly nicknamed the tri-town area]; popped off the highway and pulled into the hardware store; where BTW, you could park 5 feet from the entrance door [LOL]; walked in and said, *Hi Art*. He greeted me back...even remembered my name! [now, this is 10 years later!] I was floored. Told him I was looking for *S* hooks, in two steps he came back with handful of sizes.
So I had my hooks, and spent a few enjoyable minutes, catching up with him with the latest small town news, scandal and gossip.
I could wax on and on, about the shopping in a small grocery/butcher store, and purchases were tallied in little book; and dad would *pay-for-the-charges* on Friday, when he got paid. Or the dress shop where alterations were always free. Or the pharmacist’s wife, who would deliver your script on her way home.
I know there are many more *small town* places like this, that excel in service. But you aren’t going to find them at a mall or Amazon. :)
Heh. Back-in-the-day it was a *thang* to get your Easter coat, hat and new shoes. WE *dressed* for Easter Mass. And every Sunday, for that matter. It was serious business :)
Now, any kind of garb seems acceptable. It’s *dress-down* Friday 24/7.
Totally agree, if you wear a 10 and you get a 10 that should work. But if you wear a 12 and want a 10 better lose weight. You are only fooling yourself by buying relaxed fits. Age has a lot to do with clothing sales, they don’t want to make clothes for seniors, we don’t want street walker crap. When they stopped making my shoe size I had a tough time finding ones that fit. Same goes for bras, these new ‘natural fits’ don’t work for Senior women they let you sag worse than nature does.
Then you have issues for those of us with health problems, no clothes out there for us. Unless it’s Alfred Dunner. I’m not ready for that high priced crap yet.
I shopped Penny’s, Sears, Macy’s Dillard’s, until they went to cheap Chinese crap.
What’s time to a hog?
Thanks. Grace and peace thru Jesus the Lord.
I’m not sure how much Trump’s policies played into it either. I received emails from The Limited for at least 3 months advertising certain percentages off. I never thought anything about it because there was no mention of them closing the stores until the last two weeks when I got emails advertising 60-70% off. Then there was a brief blurb at the bottom of the email saying “Everything must Go, Store Fixtures are also for sale but not subject to sale pricing” which I thought was very odd.
I’m glad they have an online presence as well, I have always liked their clothes, although I find them a bit pricey sometimes. They do offer great color and style choices that are not skanky or hooch :0)
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