This is one of those things that get you questioning America’s “greatness”. I know the purchasing is still happening and has just shifted, but damn, is it depressing to see places going out of business left and right.
I only see the sad. Same as watching newspapers (and proper journalism itself)disappear into the ether.
Shopping online has its place - goodness knows I do it myself- but bricks and mortars have an equally important role, imo.
There’s an entire mall near me that is closing. It’s called Landmark Mall, and it was the set for a big part of the recent Wonderwoman movie.
To my mind, this isn’t your typical retail failure. This mall has been around since the early '60s, when it was an outdoor shopping center. It was always extremely successful. Million$ were spent enclosing it and adding levels to it.
Location? It is just a few miles from the heaviest traffic intersection in the Western Hemisphere. It is surrounded by very dense residential land - mostly high-rise condominiums.
So what killed it? I think it was Sears. When the Sears automotive scandal hit, the whole mall lost it’s shine. It also had a Macy’s, but that space is now a homeless shelter. The nicer boutiques left as soon as their leases were up, and only low-level dollar stores and seedy consignment shops would take their places.
I firmly believe that if they could have kicked Sears out the moment they lost the public’s trust, the mall would still be thriving. But those super long-term leases that they give to the anchor stores don’t have an integrity clause.
On the other side of this equation, I see strip malls around the area killing businesses left and right. Good restaurants and popular shops close all the time and the answer is always the same “They have raised the rent beyond our ability to stay open.” Landlords push prices too high and end up creating a lose-lose situation. The end product is always a shopping center full of businesses surviving off the original investment, and which will never be profitable unless the rent goes down.
But I am flummoxed by the number of retail businesses that could easily add a website to increase their sales. Every one of these shops has large swaths of time when they must remain open, but their employees are just waiting for customers. It seems like it would be so easy to set up a small fulfillment station behind the counter and let them fill internet orders during that time period. Yes, it would take some balancing, and you might have to hire a night crew if the internet orders took off, but where is the downside to that?
Keep in mind that although Amazon is seen as the retail killer, most stuff is still bought in bricks and mortar stores. Although note that this includes stuff like groceries, cars and other goods that are harder to buy online.
In the DC area, a few big malls are thriving, and they are increasingly integrating themselves with hotels, residential high-rises, and offices. Smaller malls are withering.
Dillards seems to be busy whenever I’ve been there. It has a brand identity like Nordstrom, for great service and a great shoe department.
Electronics around here is mostly just Best Buy and Micro Center. The Circuit City chain died several years ago, and another electronics company called HH Gregg took over a lot of their spaces. They went under quickly as well. A local company called Belmont had been around for 75 years and just closed. It was commonly described as “beloved,” but I had always found them to be overpriced, with obnoxious salespeople.
Welcome to the Retail Apocalypse. I don’t think it can be stopped. Walk down the main street of any town and see how many vacant stores there are. People could be working in those stores.
I work in a high end discount store. I hope it stays open.
I don’t feel we’re seeing a winnowing process, where the weaker malls will close and the stronger malls will survive. I think we’re seeing an extinction process, where the weaker malls will close first and the stronger malls will close later.
As you noted, there’s a critical mass issue. It’s not like a video store, for example, where one stubborn owner can refuse to accept he’s working in a dying industry and can keep his store open. Keeping a mall open requires dozens of businesses.
Clearly online is convenient and taking sales from brick and mortar, but it’s more complex than that, here is some data:
1 - ALL of online sales represent about 10% of all retail sales.
2 - Companies opening new brick and mortar stores are 5x the number of companies closing stores (75% of closures are from some small number of companies). But new store opening tends to be smaller.
3 - Restaurant sales (part of retail), represent strong growth (implies shifting spending patterns from goods to experiences is a significant factor in the shifting retail landscape)
4 - Brick and mortar presence appears to increase online and overall (e.g. Target)
Actual ad campaign: “There’s always parking at Sears.”
Unstated truth behind said campaign: “Because no one’s shopping there.”
[quote=“JcWoman, post:18, topic:848580”]
I worked with the corporate staff of Venture Stores when they began their death spiral in the 1990s. (Remember, this was before the era of Amazon.) The CEO and corporate VPs constantly screamed about maintaining the levels of customer service, store cleanliness, adequate stocking, etc. However, good customer service costs money. The stores gradually got more poorly staffed, shelves were restocked more slowly, and the Venture/Target comparisons tilted more and more toward Target. In the end it was poor corporate decisions that doomed Venture, but store-level problems had already alienated their customers.
I think malls dying out and brick and mortar retail dying out are two nearly separate things. Malls are dying out due to the combined impacts of two things- internet sales AND the rise of big box stores. Big box stores take the lower-end of the mall traffic, while internet stores and more specialized retailers take the higher-end traffic.
Look at it this way- if you need a basketball, are you going to go to the local mall to go to the sporting goods store, or are you going to go to Target, Wal-Mart or Amazon to buy one? Same for underwear, books, barbecuing spatulas, jeans, etc… And if you need something specific like say… a camping stove, it’s likely that you’re going to go either find it online, or you’re going to go to REI or a specialized backpacking shop.
So while malls are an idea whose time has passed, brick and mortar retail is still just fine, but morphed into the present-day format of big box stores and extremely specialized stores.
There has been a fundamental shift in employees from the “olden” days. In the past, sales clerks knew more about their products than I did. This situation has reversed, and I find myself facing friendly, but inexperienced min-wage workers who, quite frankly, are in my way.
They stand on the opposite side of a counter, looking at a terminal and cannot understand nor find what I need. I’ve become frustrated, wishing I could just turn the damned terminal around and search for myself. And that is what Amazon has done. It isn’t the delivery convenience, they’ve literally turned the sale clerk’s terminal around to present the information to me. And I can almost always find it more accurately and faster than dealing with employees.
Just a few recent examples:
While changing a trailer from surge to electric brakes, I entered a national auto parts store to buy new wheel hubs. Although I was armed with an accurate measure of the spindle and hole patterns, the young clerk was incapable of anything beyond asking “what year and make of car?”. He obviously had never done anything significant on a vehicle, never replaced axles, bearing seals, nor brakes, and had no idea what to do beyond his rote questions. Since my trailer wasn’t in his database he literally could not help me. Back home, 5 minutes on Amazon pulled up the hubs, bearings, and seals all in a kit, and they were on my doorstep in a few days.
My hot tub pump failed last month, and I visited the local swimming pool store to inquire about a replacement. The nice-but-clueless gal behind the counter pointed at a random pump on their shelf and opined “maybe that one will work”. No idea that they come in different voltages, discharge configurations, gph, speeds, and wiring. Literally clueless. Giving up, I asked about replacement bromine/mineral cartridges. She wasn’t sure what they were, and suggested (I swear this is true) that I go home and take a picture of the old ones, then return to see if she could find a match. Again, 5 minutes on Amazon got a perfect match for the pump, and a season’s worth of cartridges to my door by week’s end.
I’ll skip the rest, but I can give you similar tales of Best Buy, Home Depot, and others. All with the same problem. The clerks know far less about the products than I do, and end up being an obstacle between me and the information I need to access.
I realize “Retail America” is stuck between a rock and hard place, since they can’t pay wages to attract expertise to work in their stores. I’m just thankful Amazon is there to provide the information I need in order to buy.
I don’t think the dead malls phenomenon is a shrinking space between high end and low end, although I’d agree that that is hurting brick and mortar retail in general.
I think it is the cost of maintaining additional indoor space and the fact that a portion of the population thinks a halfway-populated mall is creepy. After all, strip malls and “lifestyle centers”* are, if anything, still spreading, and they have the same mix of stores as malls did, they just have a lower overhead and people will still go if they’re half-empty.
*Put in quotes because a lot of them are just high-end strip malls without any activities or housing.
You’re not wrong, pullin. I’m a straight, white chick who owns one (1) cordless drill. But it’s getting increasingly common for me to know more about tools, DIY repairs, and even fuckin’ lumber and metalware than the orange aprons at Home Depot.
Used to be, you’d talk with an old, crusty fella at the hardware store who’d know exactly what you needed to do whatever projects you had in mind, and could offer advice or suggestions for the usual newbie mistakes.
Now, it’s more efficient - and less prone to errors or bad information - to look up a YouTube tutorial and identify the supplies my damn self.
Last time I was at Home Depot and needed steel wire, I tried 3 different employees. They all assumed I was hanging a picture, and when told I was not they … kinda fuzzed out mentally, like why would anyone need any kind of wire for anything else? None grasped that aluminum wire is a different thing, not interchangeable with steel … which didn’t matter since none could help me find the damn thing anyway. They only knew where the picture-hanging kits could be found.
Went home before I strangled one of them in sheer frustration, and ordered the damn wire off Amazon. Of course, since I couldn’t see or touch it & the seller used a weird metric diameter measurement instead of standard gauge sizes, I got the wrong fucking wire.
Eventually drove way the fuck outta my way to get to one of those small, independent hardware stores staffed by crusty old fellers. Bought 3 spools, because fuck if I’m going through that bullshit again.
I think in part this is a consequence of a good job market, so the experienced staff at these retail stores are able to get better jobs elsewhere. During the next recession, you may see more overqualified retail employees.
Retail has it very tough, even Supermarkets are under more pressure these days. For big stores like Sears, Penny’s & Macy’s, Amazon and others are sucking away too many purchases and forcing lower margins.
What does that mean? Like a Filene’s Basement?
I disagree with this. I think it’s a consequence of store owners and/or management hiring the cheapest workers they can (i.e. minimum wage) and not bothering to train them or motivate them. I know margins are thin, I’m right there in it. But when my shop grows large enough to support paid staff, I’m going to pay them properly for the work they do and treat them like professionals.
For example, there is this episode of The Profit: http://www.cnbc.com/live-tv/the-profit/full-episode/hatbox-ramp/1655629379721 (I love this show!) Here’s the TL;DR for anybody who doesn’t want to spend 45 minutes watching it. Marcus goes to investigate a Los Angeles shop that sells hats. One of the sales clerks who works there is a HUGE fan of wearing hats. He also wears very dapper suits to go with the hat he personally wears, very stylish. After talking about the merchandise for a bit and being impressed that the clerk knows the merchandise, Marcus asks to buy a hat. This clerk does not just sell him a hat. He takes the hat, tries it on Marcus, puts it over a steamer to adjust the fit, explains to Marcus what he’s doing and why, tries it on some more and adjusts it some more and even comments that he’s going to adjust the shape of the front of the brim to better flatter the shape of Marcus’ face. Marcus ended up not helping that shop owner fix her business, but as he walked out he told that clerk that he could work for him any time. That’s what I want to do with my employees, when I get them.
I guess our little semi-rural county of 40,000 (only 20% of whom fill the state prison) supports a half-dozen sites that might be considered strip malls. None are anchored by big stores; a couple are anchored by thrift shops, the rest by grocers. All sites sport at least one empty storefront. The main streets in our quaint Gold Rush-era towns bustle with local specialty shops. Sears, KMart, and the largest auto dealership (where we got our last car) are gone. Wally’s sits by itself, supplying the county with drugs, clothes, and toilet tissue. Amazon won’t fly drones upcountry anytime soon, so we shop locally.
I’ll estimate our online purchases as about 1% of our spending. We’re located about midway between the capitals of California and Nevada so our CostCo and Trader Joe’s buying depends on whether Kit Carson Pass is open. Macy’s? MrsRico exploits their online 70%-off sales. Target? We saw one last year. Best Buy? Ditto. Dillard’s? Not since 2011. JC Penny? Maybe around 1995. “Department” stores beside those modeled on Fred Meyer, such as WalMart, are irrelevant now. Customer service? That’s nice.
What’s retail’s future in the US? (WalMart was the high-priced store in Zacatecas, Mexico.) People will shop grocers for fresh food and specialty shops when online isn’t appropriate, like wanting something specific RIGHT NOW. People will enrich big box stores for convenience. Most Americans live in denser urbanities so expect surviving retailers to cater to them, delivery drones and all. Invest in drones now.
I had heard that about malls as well, and yet the Mall of America company is building giant megamalls in New Jersey and Miami.
funny in 1950 most of America shopped by catalog in 1990 it was the mall by 2000 it was amazon which is just an infinite catalog I wonder if around 2060 malls will become popular again due to cheap transportation and land and nostalgia …