@lnxw48a1
Prior to the Payless announcement, 2,187 store closings had been announced in the first six weeks of the year, according to the global market research firm's report. This represented a 23 percent increase over the same time period last year.
Those closings include 749 Gymboree stores, 251 Shopko stores and 94 Charlotte Russe locations.
For 2018, Coresight Research tracked 5,524 closings, which included all Toys R Us stores, and hundreds of Mattress Firm stores, Kmart and Sears locations, and Brookstone's remaining mall stores.
The record year for closings was 2017, with 8,139 shuttered stores, Coresight reported. This included the 2017 Payless closings, the entire HHGregg electronics and appliance chain and hundreds of Sears and Kmart stores.
Seems that nobody wants to go into stores anymore.
@geniusmusing In my opinion, the price of retail space is way disproportionate these days. It will have to come way down before it is profitable to be a retailer again.
@lnxw48a1 All that is needed is to follow the money. Most (if not all) malls are owned by publicly traded companies and they require more profit every year (just like all other publicly traded companies) so the price will never go down until they start losing money, then there are two options, lower rent or close the mall and wait for a developer who wants to build something else on the land.
The other problem is store/company profitability, as buying stuff to sell and waiting to sell it costs money and if you cannot cover the overhead (rent/utilities) while matching the same price as Amazon, it is a losing game.
Add into the mix that "customer service" has really become an oxymoron I can understand why people hate going to stores but can wait for two day shipping.
@geniusmusing Personally, I much prefer to have my item immediately after I hand over money. It is far too common to order something online, then have something completely different delivered, if your item arrives at all.
@lnxw48a1 Maybe it is all the buying I do online at work rather than go to a store and the total lack of help in most stores that I do go into that makes me do more shopping not in stores.
@alpacaherderhttps://nu.federati.net/notice/2752912 This is a lot more than just bad business decisions. This is an entire industry that is facing collapse (and with said collapse is the loss of one of the biggest sources of entry-level and mid-level job opportunities; there will be a lot more unemployed twenty-something and thirty-something [and also seventy-something] people).
As much as we want to promote STEM and robotics, there are not enough programming and sysadmin jobs to replace retail.