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I don't think there has been a thread specifically to address Big Box stores, and it might seem like a minor issue given the more obvious big news going on in the world, but the economic and political effects of Big Box stores are a fairly major deal. I don't know the entire history of the Big Box store, so instead of giving an encyclopediac introduction, I will just give a quick sketch of what they are today. Big Box stores are large retail chains, usually national or international, that sell general merchandise, usually at low or medium prices. The most famous is Wal-Mart, along with Target, K-Mart and others. There are also Big Box stores that focus on specific lines of merchandise, such as Lowe's or Home Depot (home improvement equipment), Best Buy (electronics), Cabela's (outdoor gear). There are also "Little Box" stores that are the same thing on a smaller scale. (Walgreen's Drugs or The Dollar Tree)]. Big Box stores are almost exclusively built as new, purposeful developments that rely on highway or freeway access on cheap land. The are, as the name implies, usually architecturally boring and utilitarian. Most stores are almost identical. They are usually built in commercial parks that work as uncovered shopping malls, with a general purpose retail outlet like Wal-Mart providing the "anchor" and specialized retailers in attached or detached buildings. Big Box stores have kind of been a Bête Noir for many on the left, for several reasons: 1. Low wages. Many of these businesses keep prices low by keeping wages low. Employees also have little job security or benefits, and because the chains are run nationally, there is little personal loyalty to the employees. 2. Environmental impacts from sprawl: Big Box outlets tend to have gigantic parking lots and encourage more driving, which leads to every type of pollution, including water, air, noise and light. Since they are often new developments, they also involve habitat loss and destruction. 3. Destroying neighborhood and town character. Big box stores often destroy local businesses and downtown areas, turning cities into a bifurcated downtown and a highway interchange full of retail that has little community interaction. (People can expand on these points and others at great length, I am sure). On the other hand, here is a few of the pro's: 1. Supply chain logistics. These stores, through a unified supply chain, can deliver goods to more places at a cheaper price, thus increasing efficiency. Some of the low prices are not due to predatory business practices as much as they are due to good centralized planning. 2. Related to the first: these have often opened up new classes of goods in places they wouldn't otherwise be. Unified marketing and economies of scale were one of the things that allowed things like computers to be sold outside of specialty shops. 3. Sometimes "the unique character" of local businesses isn't a good thing. Both in hiring and in how they treat customers, local businesses can be discriminatory. National HR standards and employee conduct training can make for a more pleasant shopping experience. (Or: if you are a woman looking for a job, you might have a lot better of a time applying at Ace Hardware than at Earl's Toolshed) Also, not exactly a reason, but many people feel, with some reason, that anti-Big Box viewpoints are often snobbish. I am sure everyone has comments to make about this that are somehow interesting or informative, so lets get arguing! Thread Update April 2017 I must have been behind the times when I started this thread, because I was still under the impression that retail, especially Big Box retail, was a behemoth that was literally and figuratively steamrolling across the United States' small towns, turning idyllic small towns into parking lots full of Bed, Bath and Beyonds, PetSmarts and Walgreens. But it turns out that 2017 is one of the worst years in a long time for retail, where the Big Box stars that surplanted "Mom & Pop Stores" are being replaced by Amazon, as well as suffering from previous overexpansion and shifting demographics. Several large, historically important retail chains are facing major setbacks, with Sears/K-Mart being one of the biggest. This thread's focus has naturally shifted to be on the causes, and effects, of 2017's Retail Apocalypse. I will see if I can have a mod change the thread title to reflect this. glowing-fish fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2016 19:38
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OneEightHundred posted: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. I went into a Barnes and Noble last year, and it seemed they were kind of trying to combine an "experience" with just a place to buy things. So you have books, toys, displays and a cafe. So it kind of offers a "service" as well as just a product. Its a keen bit of marketing, but I don't know how successful it will be on two grounds: 1. If you want an authentic, interactive community experience, like those millenials are doing in their renovated downtowns, going to a shopping park and drinking a coffee while reading the newspaper isn't really that involving. 2. Its expensive for the experience. Buy a book for 4 dollars on Amazon, or buy it for 10 dollars at Barnes and Noble and drink a 5 dollar coffee. The added value of that experience doesn't seem to be 10 dollars. 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.
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Dec 4, 2016 16:58
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Star Man posted:I hate going to Walmart, Target, or Kmart. I hate it, hate it, hate it. But I can't quit them. There is rarely anything on Amazon that I need that I'm willing to ride out a two-day wait for that I can just drive ten minutes to Walmart and get for a couple of dollars more. It's just easier for me to go to Guiry's and buy some paints than it is to order it on Dick Blick and wait. But I also love shopping. It gets me out of the house for a while at least. I don't know who to disagree more with in that article: the strawman, or the author who destroyed the strawman, presumably to the slow clap of onlookers. I guess one thing about Wal-Mart specifically is that I grew up in what I think was the last part of the US to get Wal-Marts, Oregon and Washington. There was already the Fred Meyer chain, which was founded in Oregon, invented "One Stop Shopping", but were built with a little bit more harmony in regards to urbanization (and were unionized). I don't think I heard about Wal-Marts until the early 1990s, and I can't even remember the first time I went into one. One of the interesting things about that article for me is how much going to Wal-Mart has become this type of reverse-snobbery in certain places "All those East Coast ELITES care about their communities! Well, we will show them by destroying our towns!" This is especially odd to me considering this recent election was about protectionism: people want to protect their wages, protect their traditional towns, but also don't want to listen to those COASTAL SNOBS who are suggesting that maybe there is a downside to replacing towns with freeway interchanges. Its like, you know that if you want to keep those "manufacturing jobs in America", you won't be able to buy a fan for $5 dollars at 3 AM, right?
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Dec 5, 2016 00:00
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the trump tutelage posted:It's worth noting that these are only pros if you believe our current consumption/consumerism culture is a good thing. I don't really know what "consumerism culture" means. It seems to be a nebulous thing to criticize. But I know that I buy certain things. Lets say I want to buy a box of envelopes. If my town has five stores selling envelopes, and each one of those stores has their envelopes trucked in from a different warehouse in a different truck, that is less efficient than if you have one store with one truck and one warehouse.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:15
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Sylink posted:I hope the general poverty is helping push consumerism down the toilet. Buying poo poo is a soulless experience and I've tried to minimize personally. Its like that lovely cube city from the Reboot cartoon plopped down in every suburb forever. Consumerism is a soulless experience? Can you explain more, please? I've never considered the idea that materialism is a vapid escape from a meaningless life.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:18
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Walmart actively avoids paying anybody at all. I worked for them a few years ago and when the recession hit they did their best to cut hours to the bone and get rid of anybody making more than ten an hour. Benefits also instantaneously became prohibitively expensive. Now they absolutely will not start new people full time. This is entirely geared toward making the Walton kids rich. They won't raise wages like that unless they're forced to. And in a normal market economy, they couldn't get away with that, because other competing retail outlets would attract workers away. However, Wal-Mart is a monopsony for labor (a monopsony is the counterpart to a monopoly, the sole buyer), and so can pay workers below what they would earn in a competitive market. Apart from all of the moral issues, this is kind of one of the biggest problems in economics: centralization leads to economies of scale, which saves money, but also can lead to anti-competitive pricing, which loses money.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:07
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OhFunny posted:The big box that is hosed the most is probably Sears. Sears also runs K-Mart? I think most of the Sears I know are still anchor stores in malls. But that might vary from place to place. OwlFancier posted:Are they still doing that insane libertarian management strategy? I don't know what this is, but it sounds fascinating.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:05
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Is it that hard to figure out your walmarts were different? Come on guys it's okay. I find it funny that Walmart has done for this thread what it has done for many other American towns: sucked up everything. I mean, this thread doesn't have to be all about Walmart. We can talk about Bed, Bath and Beyond as well!
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Dec 10, 2016 02:50
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OwlFancier posted:That's an ikea. How much is an Ikea a big box retailers? It certainly fits the description in some ways (big location, homogenous lay out, exhaustive selection of products), but not in others (they are selective in where they build locations, and aren't focused on being super cheap)
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Dec 10, 2016 18:33
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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? The cost of building and staffing a retail or service area for the general public is a big expense compared to running a warehouse. Someone mentioned that warehouses are in non-consumer friendly areas. So you would probably, for a start, need to make the roads and parking area consumer friendly, and worry about the lost time and cost of freighting having to stop for cars. The entire parking and retail area needs to be designed for consumers, it needs to be staffed, it needs security, all of these costs add up. Basically it takes a lot of overhead to make a customer experience, and the returns seem to be pretty small.
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Dec 12, 2016 17:18
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Mister Macys posted:It's called "Ohio". Oh did someone mention "rural" because I'm here to tell you about life in Montana and why you are totally not hardcore. I spent a lot of time in the rural poverty thread annoying people by questioning their definition of "rural". I wasn't just trying to be a troll, I was honestly confused about how people who lived in suburbs of 50,000 people 90 minutes outside of a city of two million people compared themselves isolated. When I was growing up in Oregon, everything from Minnesota eastwards was just considered generally "The East". Like, the entire idea of a place like Ohio, with several million plus cities, no wilderness, and very easy transportation to some of the world's most important cities being called "The Middle of Nowhere" is confusing to me. Ohio is in the middle of the US's population and industrial center. But how is that relevant to this thread? There are some people who discuss big box stores and the areas around them as something that happens in rural America, in sparsely populated areas, and look at them as in opposition to urban sophistication. But that is silly, because kind of by definition you can't have a big box story in a true rural area. There is some type of cultural ruralness to them, but they are suburban/exurban. You need a big population base to have big box stores. In Missoula, Montana, for example, there are two Wal-Mart superstores and a Cabelas, a Costco, a Borders, a Michaels, etc. Basically the full gamut of big box stores. Missoula has a population of around 100,000 metro and is the largest city in 200 miles one way and 300 miles the other way. I lived 40 miles south of Missoula. The town I was in was about 15,000 people, and was big enough to have a K-Mart, and an Ace Hardware store. It (by the desire of the residents) didn't have a Wal-Mart, and also didn't have the population for one. It also had "big box" style grocery stores. 20 miles south of my town was a town of 1,000 people, with a small independent grocery store. About 15 miles south of that, the last town had a combination convenience store/gas station/post office. Sorry to bore people with a rundown of Montana geography, but one of the differences that comes up for me is that while for many people, the entire concept of big box stores is about rural America and small towns without many options, from my experience, they are basically urban in their setting, although not urban culturally. There are still like three degrees of rurality below the type of places where you find Big Box stores.
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Dec 16, 2016 19:04
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Corning, Arkansas, a town with less than 4000 people, which is in a county with 16000 people, which is 30 miles away from the nearest town with a population of over 10000 and 50 miles away from the nearest town of over 50000 people has and supports a Walmart. There are plenty of Cornings out there. Yeah, but I was talking about rural areas, not East Coast states like Arkansas. Okay, non-troll answer: Arkansas might be a different situation because Wal-Mart was founded there and many of those stores were probably pre-super center era. But I am not the expert on the geography of the US. But I do know that places in the East that would be considered tiny would be the biggest city for 50 miles in parts of the West.
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Dec 17, 2016 01:53
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Your rural gatekeeper gimmick is so weird. It is like the people in texas that have to get all huffy if someone says they are hot or people in new hampshire that have to step in to tell what real cold is every time someone in some other state calls something cold. Or the dumb claim that people who are being paid under the table at less than minimum wage really shouldn't complain because that isn't real poverty as long as they are making more than people in africa. Its not a gimmick, and its not weird. The difference is, I know that there are places more rural than where I've visited. Most people in Eastern states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Arkansas seem to be honestly unaware that wilderness areas and isolated areas exist. They do think that the difference in America is the difference between New York City and Dayton. I am the one who has said there are gigantic gradations, the Easterners are the ones who believe that the only choices are hipster city or dad city. Ohio is the 7th most populous state, and is the 10th most densely populated state. Starting in New York City, if you are driving across the country, Cleveland is 1/7th of the way across the country. Ohio might be slightly less urbanized and integrated into the transportation grid as New York State, but its not "The Middle of Nowhere" glowing-fish fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 16:59
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Nevvy Z posted:Southern Ohio does have some pretty rural areas though. They have special scholarships and stuff. Normally I would apologize for derailing a thread, but... The desire of suburban Easterners to cosplay poor country folks was strong enough that they decided it would be an awesome idea to support a reality show star fronting for a fascistic foreign country. So name a rural part of Southern Ohio.
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Dec 18, 2016 03:02
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Listen, that isn't secret information you have, everyone knows that. No one is impressed, just like no one is impressed with people from arizona telling people in alaska that 90 isn't hot or people in maine telling people in florida that 28 isn't cold weather. It's okay for terms to be relative to local norms, you wouldn't even win the title rural anyway if only the most rural person could claim the award. Great avatar/post combination. Anyway, let me talk about why this distinction is important to this thread. The overall argument about what counts as "rural" is a very fluid thing, and if its important for people living an hour outside of Cleveland to feel like they are rural, I can't really say much about that. But this is a thread about Big Box retail. I guess the best way to explain it is through a personal anecdote, which I know is not the best form of argument but bear with me. When I was a kid, and living near Salem, Oregon, there was a small town that was a little closer than Salem. We would go there for a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk, as well as snacks. Mostly snacks. It was expensive, it had a small selection, the service was slow, but it was one of our stores. The owner of the store worked there, together with his family. So, the other side to the high prices and bad selection: one day during a bad snowstorm, when we couldn't get out of our house, my mother called up the owner of the store and told him we were trapped, and he took our order for about 200 dollars worth of groceries (in 1980s money) and drove them to us through the snow. That is kind of a marginal case, because even though we shopped at that store, we didn't need to, we would still go to Salem to chain grocery stores (and Fred Meyer) for "real" grocery shopping. But there were times and places when grocery stores were local, and where the owner was at the register, and he could give you groceries if you were low on money, and he could give your kids a part time job, and he could stop and talk and give you some boxes. So as far as a rural retail experience, it means that shopping is a community experience. That is why I say that Walmart and other big box stores are fundamentally an urban experience, because they are impersonal. At most you might know the names of a few cashiers, but that is where it stops.
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Dec 18, 2016 03:28
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's almost as if...wait for it.. So your counterpoint to my statement that there are many gradations between urban and rural is that there are...many gradations between urban and rural? I guess we will just have to agree to agree. But this thread is specifically about Big Box retail, and one of the topics related to that is how suburbanization and sprawl has kind of disrupted and ended rural communities. And when we talk about Ohio, we talk about a place with a pretty high population density and a lot of Walmarts. Here is a map of every Walmart in Ohio: http://www.allstays.com/c/walmart-ohio-locations-map.htm I poked around at that map, and it seems like the Walmart pole of inaccessibility for Ohio is McConnelsville, which is equidistant between Athens, Zanesville, Cambridge and Marietta. Its about an hour between the four of them. There is nowhere in Ohio where you can't get off of work, drive to a Wal-Mart, shop, and come home and make dinner. From a retail standpoint, the state has been big boxified.
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Dec 18, 2016 03:46
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DrNutt posted:My favorite "rural" people are the idiots from Western Washington bucking against the trend of the I5 corridor and embracing ignorance and pretending like city folk don't understand them when they all live in suburban hellholes and are at worst a 20 minute drive from major metropolitan areas. See the Key Peninsula and Spanaway for examples. Like Chehalis/Centralia. I don't consider Chehalis/Centralia to be very rural. But Ohio is basically Chehalis/Centralia, although additionally they are all a weekend's drive from Washington DC and New York City.
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Dec 18, 2016 03:48
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PT6A posted:And even that's not particularly rural compared to rural Alaska or northern Canada, where you can actually need a plane or a seasonal road for access to any reasonably-sized town. Well, of course the truth is that its a sliding scale, and you can always find somewhere more rural. But the problem with that type of sliding scale is that its true in the other direction. Is Queens rural? Because it is right next to Manhattan, and Manhattan is obviously much more urbanized. If someone in Queens started talking about how big city people don't understand the needs of heartland folks, would that make sense? But this thread is about retail specifically, so in my mind one of the major differences if an area is close enough to a transit hub and has a high enough population density to host big box retail. Because whether you live in a city of 2 million people or a town of 20,000 people, your retail experience is going to be pretty similar: you are going to be dealing with a national or at least large local chain, there is going to be standardized products at a relatively low price, the management of the store is going to be impersonal and hidden in the back, there is going to be 10-20 registers, and the store is going to be built off of a highway with a big parking that kind of interrupts the landscape. If I go to the Stadium Fred Meyer on Burnside in Portland, right in the middle of Portland's trendiest urban district, or if I go to the Fred Meyer in Brookings, Oregon (population 12,000), I am going to have pretty much the same experience. (For non-Northwesterners, Fred Meyer is a combined grocery/clothing/hardware/furniture store.) There isn't much of a difference retail wise. There is a much sharper difference in the other direction, when you've gone to a town that has only a general grocery store, where its more integrated into the town's layout (on main street next to the post office and not off on a highway with a gigantic parking lot on the edge of town). So, in a way, going from 2 million to 20,000 is all the same, but then going from 20,000 to 2,000 is a much sharper difference.
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Dec 18, 2016 15:53
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:It's rural vs urban really what makes that distinction though? Big box retail seems much more popular in suburbs then it is in in huge cities. Sure, big box stores exist in NYC, but most folks are going to go to their neighborhood grocer instead. The population is big enough to support all sorts of specialty stores that do one thing really well, so you don't have to go to a regressed-to-the-mean all-in-one supercenter for (cream puffs, pencils, cookbooks, etc). Good point! I agree. One of the weird things for me is that living in a small town can be a lot like living in a big city, in a way, because you might be interacting with a lot of small business and independent retail, and those businesses might be built to fit in with the community, instead of the community adjusting to them. There are a lot of small towns in the western states (usually college, resort or retirement towns) where the town can be only around 3,000 people, but it will have a main street with an independent bookstore, an independent stationary store, a local pharmacy and clothing store, etcetera. Its kind of when you aren't in Portland and you aren't in Whitefish that you do your shopping at Border's instead of either Powell's or Aunt Sally's Bookstore. Also when you aren't in Portland and aren't in Whitefish that you are eating at The Olive Garden instead of Cool Joe's Fusion Thai/Italian or Grandpa's Diner. But even in cities, while they don't host the truly super-massive Big Box stores, and they might have a slightly smaller floor plan, and a parking garage instead of a parking lot, there are still a lot of Big Box/Little Box retailers. I don't now about New York City, but when I lived in Portland, right in the middle of the city, I did a lot of shopping at places like The Dollar Tree and Walgreens. I mean, I had lots of unique retail options for unique things, but when I wanted a box of envelopes, I would go to one of those places.
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Dec 18, 2016 16:45
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DrNutt posted:The appeal of Kmart is that if you are ever feeling good and optimistic, you can go and get a big dose of despair absolutely free. The last few times I've been in a K-Mart it was...well, mediocre, but not terrible? Like, they had cheap stuff, it was a little disorganized, but they had at least a little bit of what I needed. I would only go to K-Mart every three months because I needed a pair of shoes, or some sweat pants or socks. Once I bought a 20 dollar digital camera there. And then while I was there I bought myself some granola bars and goldfish crackers or something. It was a perfectly mediocre retail experience, but nothing that made me feel despair.
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Jan 16, 2017 15:55
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JC Penney's announced 138 store closings: https://www.boston.com/g00/news/business/2017/03/17/here-are-the-138-jc-penney-stores-that-are-closing From the areas I know of, many of these JC Penney's seem to be pre-shopping mall main street JC Penney's in smaller towns.
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Mar 18, 2017 19:24
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OhFunny posted:
Sounds like The Limited...is going to be even more limited!!! Also, this articles never get old: http://www.theonion.com/article/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-how-radioshack-still-in-b-2190 Its kind of funny, when I started this thread, I was more focusing on Big Box retail as being an unstoppable force steamrolling (literally) across the American landscape. But most of the posting seems to be about retail failures. There are still big box/little box stores that are doing well, right? Like Walgreens still seem to be sprouting up like mushrooms.
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Mar 22, 2017 14:36
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OneEightHundred posted: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. Pharmacy meaning prescriptions or any type of health products? 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?
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Mar 23, 2017 14:10
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I'm not sure why they do it that way, but I'd imagine that there's a reason that the pharmacy is in the back of the store. I always thought that was a security feature (also the reason they only have one door). You have that extra barrier against someone slamming a F150 through the pharmacy to get all the oxycontin. (In Chile, there is a specific word for theft using a vehicular collision: aluniazaje, or "moon landing")
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Mar 25, 2017 17:21
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So do we have a list of which retail outlets are doing well, which ones are having problems, and which are almost/totally gone. When I started this thread, I guess I still had a mindset from 2005 or 2006 (not too long ago) when Big Box stores were still bulldozing across America, and we thought we were being so precious in Portland because we weren't shopping at them. But it looks like things have quite changed! But I think some retailers are still doing well. These types of stores seem to be doing well: Wal-Mart and Target, because they have a wide range of merchandise, and a lot of it is low-cost and perishable. Costco, because cheap prices and probably those muffins Walgreens because they are consolidating the pharmacy business, because they have general merchandise, and because much of what they sell is things people need right away (You don't wait for Amazon to deliver your diarrhea medicine) Home Depot, Lowe's Probably because much of the merchandise is too bulky to be delivered, also its something you want to see before you buy (Perhaps demographics as well) Dollar Tree, etc: Steep discounts make up for lack of selection. Also, a one stop-shopping experience. Am I wrong on those? Are there any other retail outlets that are still doing well?
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Apr 9, 2017 17:19
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Teenagers have existed as a marketing demographic since the fifties. Jesus Christ, dude. Well, I am a guy, so my teenage years were mostly just "this JC Penney shirt looks okay, grandma", but I do remember that most girls seemed to buy clothing mostly at departments in department store? Like, maybe for some girls, that was JC Penney's, and for others it was Nordstrom's, but I don't remember as many specific teen fashion stores.
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Apr 12, 2017 16:26
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asdf32 posted:By contrast though, REI is thriving. Is that because of lifestyle and location marketing? I know that in Portland, REI is located right in the Pearl District, which is full of young rich people with a lot of money.
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Apr 21, 2017 18:23
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I updated the OP and requested a thread title change. (To reflect the shift in this thread's focus towards the "apocalypse" in US retail)
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Apr 22, 2017 20:49
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Glass of Milk posted:I'm really curious how the shrinking number of these stores affects actual land use in towns. It's probably a positive in places like San Diego which can use the land for housing (though that has it's own downsides), but I've driven through places where nothing exists except for a couple of big shopping centers. OwlFancier posted:Shopping parks are often terribly positioned. Converting them to housing would be lovely housing with no transport access. As far as changing retail into housing, I would think it would be only a little bit better than plowing up an empty field and building houses. I've read some people talking about converting retail directly into housing, and for various reasons, that a pretty ridiculous idea (I mean, it sounds awesome but where are you going to go to the bathroom in your old Cinnabon kiosk?). You can also tear down a mall and build housing on its site, and you have the advantages of the roads and electricity and some water going in, but you are still going to probably adjust that infrastructure a lot (I'm imagining the water/sewer for a shopping mall isn't what you need for a residential area), and you have transportation mismatch. I would say building on a retail complex might save 20% off of building from scratch?
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Apr 24, 2017 15:13
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It seems like even the restaurant industry isn't safe from the changes to retail: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...m=.93f7758a1bc0 Although the article doesn't mention it as a cause, a lot of this could be caused by malls/stores closing, because when people aren't stopping at Sears for a new lawnmower, they also aren't going to the Olive Garden afterwards. It would be interesting to see how restaurants are doing, compared to whether they are chain restaurants, big restaurants, or smaller, independent restaurants. I suspect that the second are still doing well, but they make up a minor part of the sector.
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Apr 28, 2017 19:39
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anonumos posted:"Fast casual" is cleaning house. lovely sit-downs are dying on the vine. What is the difference? Which one is Denny's? Like the only thing that could really drive business out of Denny's is if the Ventrue and Toreador engage in a civil war.
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Apr 29, 2017 03:41
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One of the strange things about this thread, is that I started it coming from a background of living mostly in the Pacific Northwest. Stereotypically, Oregon and Washington are environmentally friendly, have limited sprawl, have smart growth, and are full of hipsters shopping at neighborhood boutiques, and yet they might be the last part of the country where malls and big box stores are still doing well. Like, I can't think of any malls or developments in Oregon or Washington where I have seen closed stores and empty aisles. Even Mall 205 in Portland, which is kind of mocked as such, just changed from being a social mall to a Home Depot and Target mall. There really isn't that many places in the Pacific Northwest where you see abandoned storefronts and stuff.
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Apr 29, 2017 20:09
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Missoula, Montana also didn't seem to have any retail problems...maybe because it is the largest retail center for at least 200 miles.
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Apr 29, 2017 20:24
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:That's really interesting. Do you go to the mall regularly? Do you enjoy it? Also I think I get what you mean but I hadn't heard the term "social mall" before. Is that something you coined or an actual industry term? I made that term up because I had a headache and was posting in a hurry. But yes, its probably a good term. "Social Mall", as opposed to the mall where people go to buy new faucets and poo poo. I live in Santiago de Chile now, so when I go to the mall, I am going to the Costanera Center, which is the largest mall in the continent, located in the largest skyscraper in the continent. Its a pretty busy place. I went there today to buy cheese, wine, and golf sauce flavored potato chips because I do my normal grocery shopping at the largest skyscraper in the continent, which always amuses me. 
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Apr 30, 2017 07:11
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FistEnergy posted:Sauce made with bits of golf balls, obviously Ketchup and mayonnaise mixed together. It got the name "Golf Sauce" because it was invented at a golf course. The inventor was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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Apr 30, 2017 16:14
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BrandorKP posted:No you're missing an opportunity. The first time I found out about them was in Honolulu. I was reading about them and was close enough to walk to one. I had half a day off and walked down from diamond head to waikiki. To get to the floor inside the mall I had take a convoluted path up a couple escalators across, down and then back up again. It was pretty empty of people. Most of the stores were very sparse. I remember one store had three purses on the walls of an otherwise white room, clerk just standing looking professional. Eventually I attracted a security tail. I was wearing khaki shorts, boots, and a pit sweated t-shirt, scruffy bushey beard looking vaguely like zach galifianakis, I'd walked a pretty long way before getting there. I smelt a bit frankly. Eventually I got bored of disturbing the exclusivity of the place and had enough voyeurism. The exclusivity is really what they are selling. I am guessing these are mostly in city center, multifloor, urban malls? I am thinking it would be pretty hard to hide an entire floor of a typical suburban two story mall. As well as not really having a reason to: its not like Cinnabon and the Hallmark store want to shield themselves from the masses who will threaten the aspirational nature of their brands.
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May 2, 2017 16:56
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I don't think this has been specifically addressed in this thread, but what do people think of the changes in second hand retail in the 1990s and 2000s? Because those were the years that second hard stores became "Big Boxified". When I was a kid, in the 1980s, second hand stores were basically big garage sales, with really low prices but bad displays and selection. Then, over about 20 years, most of them (especially Goodwill) made it so their stores looked like a Target, and also added a bunch of new merchandise. Prices went up, but it was mostly worth it. (I don't know if this is true across the country, it is true in Oregon and Washington though) There are still some smaller second hand stores where you can still get a pair of pants for under a dollar, but at most Goodwills, you are paying 3-5 dollars for a t-shirt and 8-12 dollars for a pair of pants. Housewares, books, electronics, etc. are all similarly going up, while also being better quality. How much do you think this changes the retail landscape in general, and also how healthy are chains like Goodwill doing? I've never been in a Goodwill that wasn't busy.
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May 2, 2017 17:08
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WampaLord posted:Y'all are falling hard for like, the world's most obvious troll. I was thinking something more like Lloyd Center in Portland, where there are two floors of shopping and the third floor is medical and professional offices. Its not exactly hidden, but the third floor is not a place most mall visitors go.
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May 2, 2017 17:49
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wateroverfire posted:Whatup Chile goon. You should check out the feria on Tobalaba past Bilbao metro station on Saturday. Better and cheaper than Jumbo for veg and cheese. Fish too if you are feeling really brave. I've seen it. I actually live in Centro now, so I am pretty close to La Vega. The amount of money saved is kind of relative to whether I want to go out shopping at a feria. I mean, if I can save a luka on queso by going to La Vega, that is good, but if I have to use my Saturday afternoon time to do it, its less so, unless I am in the mood for La Vega already. (Sorry goons for interrupting this thread for Chile chat)
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May 2, 2017 18:16
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OwlFancier posted:I always figured hipster was what you get when you throw a teenager into a charity shop and they walk out with whatever fit off the rails. Which is normal for teenagers. We should probably stop this derail before it is too late, besides it is somewhat related to the point of this thread. Hipster has a derogatory label and cultural phenomena is 12 years old now. Like, even in 2005, we were getting a little tired of it as a generic label. In 2017, talking about "hipsters" is if you were to go to Woodstock and talk about all the doo-wop rockabilly kids. Or, if in 1981, you were complaining about flower children. Its more than a decade past its relevancy. And its especially weak because "hipster" can connote exactly opposite things to different people. For some people, "hipster" means someone who likes the newest fashions, likes spending money on expensive meals, has a lot of disposable income, etcetera...or "hipster" means someone who is critical of consumerism, works and shops at small/independent/community places, probably has social or political concerns, etcetera. I mean, they aren't ironclad differences, but the young marketing executive who goes to trendy bars and drinks 10 dollar martinis is not really in the same demographic as the flannel clad Linux programmer who is drinking draft beer. This is relevant to the purpose of this thread, because one of the biggest problems with retailers and younger consumers is trying to sort out the different needs of young people who aren't traditional consumers. People in their 20s don't want to go to JC Penneys for clothing, but is it because they are spending 100 dollars on a shirt at a boutique store, or is it because they are buying T-Shirts for three dollars at Goodwill, or for $1.69 a pound at a Goodwill Outlet store? These are very different things, and yet they are kind of piled together as one thing.
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May 2, 2017 19:52
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