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Different segments are going to be under different amounts of pressure. The worst-off are entertainment and electronics, which are doomed because content is all going to digital distribution and hardware prices are crashing. Barnes & Noble is probably hosed and Best Buy might be hosed (I'm really skeptical that what's left on their sales floor makes enough money to justify their real estate footprint, especially since the items most exposed to competition from Amazon are the bulky electronics that justify their huge size in the first place). Office stores are probably hosed because they're basically just electronics, furniture, and stationary, the first two are dying to Amazon and the third is dying to Wal-Mart. Stores that depend largely on clothing sales might be OK since those benefit from changing rooms and inspection, and pantry/grocery have a pretty large "need-it-now" factor. Wal-Mart is actually having a different set of problems anyway: It has too many stores that are competing with each other and it's losing a lot of sales to places like Walgreens that are more conveniently located. Wal-Mart Express was supposed to expand them to rural areas, but that was a bust (probably because they were awful). The empty shells of these things will be an interesting thing to watch though. A lot of them aren't getting converted into new retail, but instead are winding up with novelties that take up a ton of floor space like indoor racing and trampoline parks. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Dec 4, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 06:10
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glowing-fish posted:So while I think that repackaging themselves as not just retail outlets, but service and entertainment centers, might help a little, but it doesn't seem to be a full strategy. Fun anecdote: 10 years ago, if you walked into a Best Buy, movies and music were like a third of the store. Today, they're about 3 short aisles. Best Buy had other product categories that they could expand into that space though, but if retail book sales fall through, B&N is going to be a coffee shop the size of a Staples, and they're mostly located in shopping malls where the leases are really expensive. There's another important but infrequently-cited factor too: Non-fiction sales are being eroded by the availability of information on the Internet. The only silver lining is that e-reader share is stagnant at around 20%, so print is here to stay for a while at least.
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Dec 4, 2016 23:42
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Since I already brought up Best Buy shrinking the hell out of their music and movie sections, keep in mind that's another issue with specialty stores too: If the market turns against their specialty, they're dead, and then there's an empty storefront and a product category that you can't buy anywhere. Big box stores tend to be a bit better-defended against that because they can adjust to market shifts (including introducing new product categories) by just changing their floorplan.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:45
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Sears brought in a hedge fund idiot for CEO that only thinks about short-term shareholder returns, so he spent all of their money on share buybacks instead of improving stores, now the stores are dilapidated and nobody shops there any more, so now he's selling off Sears' brands and liquidating stores for more quick money. Of all the big box store deaths coming up, Sears is probably going to be the one that was most avoidable. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 20:55
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The Service Merchandise model is a bit challenging because on one hand a showroom is very space-inefficient in terms of inventory distribution, but some of that inefficiency can be offset by having a dense warehouse. Thing is, we already have low-labor places like Costco and ALDI that stock their sales floor by dropping a pallet on it and breaking the shrink wrap. They're considered niche because even Wal-Mart has drastically better merchandising. So, that factor definitely needs to be considered. At the same time, merchandising is a big labor sink because these stores are full of irregularly-sized irregularly-distributed product that has to be constantly reset due to customers ruffling it. The cashier position is really the most-threatened position right now. Wal-Mart has been trying to push for RFID for a long time to get rid of cashiers and heavily reduce inventory costs, but haven't had much luck for various reasons. Amazon Go is really just another way of doing the same thing and honestly could have been done a long time ago with RFID.
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Dec 10, 2016 19:06
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:What's stopping Amazon from building a little room on to the front of their warehouses where the public can pick up an online order or browse Amazon.com at a touchscreen kiosk? There aren't very many of them either, they're just enormous and they serve very large areas. Amazon has 88 distribution centers in the entire US. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 07:27
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Horseshoe theory posted:Best Buy has somehow staggered away from being pulled into the abyss the last few years (just like Barnes & Noble), which is bizarre since their profit margins are made on poo poo like cables and not the TVs, refrigerators, etc (which often are loss leaders). Speaking of Macy's, one of their closures is apparently in a mall near where I used to live that's in the process of converting the mall into an outlet center. Apparently they're having a hard time getting people to give enough of a poo poo any more so their solution is to give make them give a poo poo by just sending prices to the floor, and outlet centers are the only retail sector that's growing. Maybe that's another future in the cards for retail, the end of high-markup "shopping experiences."
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Jan 8, 2017 05:00
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fishmech posted:Best Buy has become cemented, through services like Geek Squad, as the place to go for paid computer / general electronic help. Not to you or me so much, but a big enough swathe of the general market. quote:Most similar stores I can think of in a similar domain are places like Micro Center which are nationwide but only a few per area if present at all, or places like Fry's just aren't national. And then assorted fully regional operators, like New York City area's PC Richard & Son. I thought they were struggling at one point due to TV prices falling and mobile saved them, but mobile is turning hyper-competitive. quote:(some random best buy guy might be getting paid by Verizon for instance).
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Jan 8, 2017 06:12
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Retail places used to make a point of ensuring that there was somebody somewhere who knew stuff about what was being sold.
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Jan 9, 2017 04:38
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asdf32 posted:Yes this. Like the Apple guy who screwed up JC Penny. Sears by comparison is chasing an impossible and barely coherent long-term goal that has nothing to do with their current business via a management strategy that's completely insane.
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Jan 9, 2017 06:49
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I don't really understand what the appeal of Kmart is even supposed to be, it's like someone decided to just make a Wal-Mart clone except with prices higher than Target.
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Jan 11, 2017 07:09
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JonathonSpectre posted:I'm talking $60+ for DS (not 3DS) games and $23+ for loving music CDs. rscott posted:For a long time the biggest distinguishing feature of Kmart was that they had layaway and Walmart didn't but then I guess they got rid of it But then the other point of layaway was that their prices were poo poo unless something was on sale, whereas their competitors' prices weren't poo poo. Maybe if Kmart was one step above Target in quality, it'd make sense, but I don't remember it ever being even one step above Wal-Mart.
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Jan 12, 2017 04:09
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Is retail as a concept really threatened or are we just undergoing a generational shift in which stores succeed? Because I look at that list and all those stores sold shoddy, ugly garbage that people can't really be expected to want to buy anymore. They're mostly mall stores, and malls were a bad idea that's rightly fading away. Wet Seal, BCBG, and Bebe all sell teen girl clothing at an awkward price point where middle-class kids can't really afford to buy it without parental help, but it's not nice or stylish enough to attract wealthy shoppers. Forever 21 and Brandy Melville are much cheaper and trendier, and the staple clothing people used to buy at Sears and Macy's people now just by at Walmart and Target, where again it's much cheaper. There's also a level of general economic malaise among the middle class, consumer spending is still not back to pre-crisis levels and personal debt levels are high, especially among fresh college graduates that have had to contend with rapidly-rising education costs. Places that are on the upper end of the price scale are in a very bad position if people decide that they need to worry about their personal finances, and most mall stores fall into that category, so no surprise that malls are getting hammered. Outlet stores are the only retail category that's growing because people want stuff cheap. Service-oriented sales and "shopping experiences" are suffering because the Internet is causing a lot of people to do all of their product research before they even come into the store. Online ordering is severely impacting categories driven by specific products like iPhones and media. Sears is committing seppuku at the altar of Ayn Rand. Through all of that, retail sales are down in general. So, it's partly a generational shift, partly an economic problem, and partly individual cases of stupidity. I don't know if malls are really a bad idea, but the retail sector is overexposed to Internet competition and needs to shrink, and the parts of it that amount to "upper middle class shopping experience" are in an unsustainable niche unless the economy improves more. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Feb 12, 2017 |
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Feb 12, 2017 22:58
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fishmech posted:A lot of malls tried transitioning to those lovely "lifestyle centers" where all the stores have outside entrances on a fake main street sort of road, but those seem to be doing even worse - and that's for good reason, that was always a lovely sort of idea. All the inconvenience of a place you have to drive out to, none of the convenience of having an enclosed temperature controlled area when going between shops. I don't know if it was really overbuilding at the time when almost everything was sold at retail stores, and a lot of mall closures were just due to bets on the local economy that didn't pan out, or newly-developed competition. As far as redevelopment going forward, I think that there's going to be a huge mess in the next couple years when a lot of malls are left with two empty anchors from Macy's and Sears closures and no clear successor. That'll be completely lethal to a lot of smaller malls that only have 3-4 anchors to begin with. Macy's has been the plan B for years now, but if they fail, then what? Malls that are declining but are in well-developed areas can convert some space to mixed-use, I've seen a few convert lots on the lower-traffic end into office space and professional services. AFAIK another big trend for mall survival lately has been to add more restaurants to promote a sort of shop-and-dine experience, but those wind up having to be new construction due to the ventilation and restroom requirements, so that doesn't solve the problem of the stores doing poorly. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 03:09
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fishmech posted:Perhaps, but a lot of those Southern places are pretty unpleasant over the summer months, what with the heat and humidity. Really well planned and thought out ones can deal with it, many of the projects don't have that level of care. By "southern" I meant pretty much anything at a southern latitude too, they're all over the place in California for completely predictable reasons.
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Feb 13, 2017 06:02
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Inventory optimization isn't necessarily an issue of where decisions are made, Wal-Mart has a very strong emphasis on it despite central decisionmaking. The paradox of chain stores is that their whole thing is offering a consistent shopping experience in different markets, but now there's a question of how to balance the benefits of a consistent brand identity and economies of scale with being able to adapt to those markets. Not being as top-heavy is one way, but most of them have been becoming more top-heavy because unskilled labor is cheap, and more sophisticated data analysis might be better at discovering local trends than low-level employees anyway.
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Feb 21, 2017 06:55
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ToxicSlurpee posted:There's actually no such thing as "unskilled labor." The problem is also not just that they don't care, it's that caring has no effect because all of the details are dictated by corporate offices and aren't up for discussion. They see store-level decision making as a liability and actively suppress it. Fast food is probably the worst offender in that regard. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 02:52
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That's also just a problem of increased industrialization and automation as well. As an example, I used to work at a computer store where all of the merchandising was done store-level. It wound up becoming experiment-driven to a large extent, like a clip strip of TrueImage boxes at the end of the hard drive aisle became a staple because it was just tried one week and it was selling multiple copies per day so it stayed. There are a lot of chain stores where doing that is impossible, the only thing anyone can do is take orders from above. I don't know how well giving more responsibility to lower-level employees would really work though compared to discovering opportunities through more sophisticated data analysis.
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Feb 22, 2017 23:34
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Apparently for all the talk of K-Mart being a shittier Wal-Mart or Target, Target isn't doing well either: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-target-results-idUSKBN16719S One thing I've seen blamed for that: Shoppers moving out of suburbs, resulting in a lot of underperforming locations.
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Mar 2, 2017 17:07
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hhgregg was as profitable as Best Buy (in percentage terms at least) until their sudden implosion over the past 3 years, which as far as I can tell is due to 2 things: One is that their sales are down 21% since 2012, probably because they only sell 2 product categories and one of those categories (TVs) has tanked in price. They're an electronics retailer without a mobile department. Best Buy's are down too, but only 9% and they're still making money. The other is they posted $70M worth of writedowns largely due to a bunch of former Circuit City locations turning out to not be worth what they paid, most of which are now closing. Oops. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 02:48
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IIRC Sears has a bunch of debt maturing this summer, so a lot of bets are that they'll be dead in June. That'll be the beginning of the mallpocalypse since nobody is going to replace them. Re: Walgreens, drug stores get 60-70% of their revenue from pharmacy and they're probably raking in stupid amounts of money from old Boomers. Everything else in their store is poo poo nobody wants to wait for, so they're mostly immune to Amazon, and they expand like crazy because they compete on convenience. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 03:49
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Oh hey I saw some more "Store Closing" signs in the neighborhood today, looks like Gander Mountain is closing 32 locations.glowing-fish posted:Pharmacy meaning prescriptions or any type of health products? quote:If they are getting that much money from the pharmacy, why even have the other products? Are toys and snacks basically a loss leader so people will think of Walgreens and then buy their prescriptions there? OhFunny posted:Clearly trying to move away from video game sales, which have shifted to online downloads. OwlFancier posted:What is "technology brand" if not electronics? Which, uh, isn't doing so well either? Ammanas posted:The customer service arms race was after the recession when everyone was panicking to 'return' to 2005 levels of sales. Now everyone is panicking to simply stay alive. Thankfully return policies are tightening up after a stunning level of graft and exploitation by thieves. The other safeguard is just been that people are honest enough on average that taking losses on stupid returns is worth not pissing off customers, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's been an uptick of it due to people publicizing information about how to exploit return policies and other store practices on the Internet, like that big mess when someone posted a guide on how to forge coupon barcodes that for some reason weren't using a whitelist, complete with a picture of a Wal-Mart receipt of a PS3 paid for with a fake coupon. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Mar 25, 2017 |
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Mar 25, 2017 04:38
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Every Payless I've ever seen is in the worst possible location of whatever property they're on, like in a corner right next to the main entrance of a mall anchor. I missed this from last month, Urban Outfitters CEO cited some interesting things during a conference call: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/urban-outfitters-tumbles-as-ceo-warns-retail-bubble-has-burst quote:“The U.S. market is oversaturated with retail space and far too much of that space is occupied by stores selling apparel,” he said. “Retail square feet per capita in the United States is more than six times that of Europe or Japan. And this doesn’t count digital commerce.” They've also frozen expansion because they'd rather sign leases after rent prices crash. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 01:54
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:So landlord greed is more to blame than actual sales collapse? Color me shocked. Phil Wahba had another interesting take on it: http://fortune.com/2017/03/08/urban-outfitters-bubble/ Highlights: Retail sales are up 4%, but down at department stores, the stores doing well are places like Ulta Beauty that offer a more "experiential" shopping experience, luxury stores aren't doing well either because they've been transitioning away from brand exclusivity and that's led to the same problem, and he thinks that department stores are going to have to shrink their store count by about half. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 16:17
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Tops I'm not sure about and would be interested in details. They bailed out of the northeast Ohio market due to competition, which is hardly surprising since grocery is notoriously low-margin and swamped with stiff regional competition. The remainder of its business is mostly in upstate New York, especially Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. All three have been in long-term population decline due to Rust Belt malaise, but the local grocery competition is very limited. AFAIK they've only shuttered one NY location and that one was in a terrible location that seems to have been designed to have as little visibility from the road as possible.
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Apr 7, 2017 04:23
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If you remember what I just said about an "experiential" shopping experience, the Apple Store is a prime example of that, and it works because Apple sells gadgets. It's not clear that the same model would make sense with clothing. There's also the fact that Apple is an extremely powerful brand, whereas consumer clothing is much more competitive.
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Apr 8, 2017 10:22
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https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/851040113467555841 Welp. Also the video in the linked Bloomberg article is worth watching, hedge fund dude basically saying every retailer was reporting that this was just a merchandising problem and they were fine with their footprint at the end of last year, then the weak holiday hit, and now all of them are talking about shrinking, and they're talking about "sales recapture," a.k.a. canning weak locations that are near enough to another location, and that with every retailer thinking the same thing, weak malls are going to get really screwed really fast. Also predicts JCPenney needs to close another 100 locations, and that there are "about 50" smaller chains (I'm guessing mid-mall stores and regional chains) that are on the brink of bankruptcy. glowing-fish posted:Wal-Mart and Target, because they have a wide range of merchandise, and a lot of it is low-cost and perishable. The only things I've heard doing well are "fast fashion" retailers (H&M, Zara), off-price retailers (TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Burlington Coat Factory, Ross), and outlets. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Apr 11, 2017 |
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Apr 11, 2017 01:45
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:It's easy to link this to how crushingly poor people are now, and I don't want to downplay that, but in the women's clothing retail space it's significant that these are close to the only brick-and-mortar stores that carry the sizes women are buying. If the average American woman is a 14 and stores only carry up to 12 they can't really act shocked that sales are down. Not as much is written about men's clothing options in extended sizing, but my impression is it isn't quite as bad because the "normal" range is bigger. A statistically-average dude can buy work clothes at the Gap, while a statistically-average woman can't. It's sounding like the main difference is just that they're able to differentiate themselves by price from what is an extremely overcrowded sector. Another thing I'm wondering about is how much Internet-fueled price research has to do with this (not clothing, but retail problems in general). The whole idea of loyal customers willing to come in to a familiar store and buy something at full price is completely boned. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Apr 11, 2017 |
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Apr 11, 2017 03:03
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CheeseSpawn posted:This article in newsweek talked about the environmental consequences.
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Apr 13, 2017 04:17
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The other problem with "jobs not coming back" is that I'm pretty sure e-commerce employs significantly fewer people compared to their sales volume. Obviously that ignores a lot of factors (wages, secondary jobs like couriers, etc.), but just a rough snapshot of revenue per employee: Costco: $942,063 Amazon: $398,768 Best Buy: $316,224 Wal-Mart: $211,247 Macy's: $163,225
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Apr 13, 2017 16:47
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Bebe has gone bye-bye, 168 stores to close.Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I knew costco paid well, I guess that partially explains how they're able to do that. Speaking of warehouse clubs, apparently Amazon may be looking at buying BJ's, which could create the ultimate retail doomsday device. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 00:06
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Sir Tonk posted:Late stage capitalism is loving weird as hell Solkanar512 posted:There was a thing on Nightly Business Report (PBS business news) talking about this very issue. They found that despite the issues we're talking baout here, rent had increased slightly and occupancy was stable. Many of the closed stores were being replaced with high end gyms, restaurants and other "experience" based businesses. glowing-fish posted:I would say building on a retail complex might save 20% off of building from scratch?
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Apr 25, 2017 16:41
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ultravoices posted:Old factories and mills are made of brick and steel and have features like windows which are often charming. We've also been programmed to see conversions of those spaces as desirable. fishmech posted:I forgot to mention earlier but, major shopping centers usually have pretty good public transportation if the area has public transit at all. It's not uncommon in the least for a big mall or something to become a de facto hub for transit routes in suburbia and spread out areas of certain cities.
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Apr 26, 2017 06:09
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dont even fink about it posted:I'd be surprised if this hasn't been posted in this thread yet:
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Apr 27, 2017 01:43
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fishmech posted:I thought the Tiger Direct retail storefronts with CompUSA branding got dropped a few years back? If you go on the CompUSA site now they don't even list any of their own products, it's just some sort of search engine for Amazon etc. Then they bought Circuit City, which they didn't use for anything but website branding. In 2012 they changed their mind and dumped both brands to consolidate everything under TigerDirect again. Last year, Systemax sold the division to PCM and closed all but 3 retail locations. hakimashou posted:Costco doesnt use shopping bags I don't think, they always reuse product boxes when they pack your stuff up for you to take home.
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Jun 1, 2017 03:11
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OhFunny posted:Holy poo poo. That was fast. ISeeCuckedPeople posted:Probably because Tigerdirect sucks.
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Jun 1, 2017 05:37
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hobbesmaster posted:Not all companies offer commercial insurance though. I was talking with some drivers while looking at doing pizza delivery and it seemed like everyone had the same idea: Take out a personal policy, and if they got in a crash, lie to their insurance company. So, yeah, it's pretty much capitalism at its finest, make a job that dumps a ton of non-obvious expenses on employees, doesn't pay enough to cover it, and gets all of the employees to rely on tax fraud and insurance fraud to make it work. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Jun 3, 2017 |
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Jun 3, 2017 07:44
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Lote posted:Interestingly, Target, Costco, Walmart and other grocery stores are getting crushed in the stock market today. Maybe the bigger problem though is that if this is Amazon's foot in the door of brick-and-mortar sales, then it might expand into other categories.. Baronjutter posted:Haha holy poo poo Amazon
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Jun 17, 2017 00:28
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One of the more interesting takes I've seen re: the Whole Foods buyout is that Whole Foods isn't actually doing so well and Amazon may not even care about their grocery business as much as their urban real estate, so they could do anything from shrink their grocery operations in favor of warehouse space and fulfillment to turn them into some sort of hybrid store, or (probably more far-fetched) scrap their grocery operations entirely.
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Jun 18, 2017 02:57
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Xaris posted:idk with zoning and everything e: Here's one of the articles making the point I guess, which probably reinforces what archangelwar is saying: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-amazon-logistics-delivery-20170616-story.html OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jun 18, 2017 |
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Jun 18, 2017 05:47
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