Retail Watchers

The main thing is that physical media has become a small niche item and no large national retailer is going to sell a lot of it. There always will be people who want to own rather than rent and collectors who like the "hunt" but they are not going to build volume for a Walmart or Target. ...

I was in a rather new one in Ohio a couple weeks ago. It was clean, busy and well kept. What struck me was the odd contrasts--they've spent some more on "decor" (3-d graphics and bright colors) particularly toward the back fo the store, whereas the front end is plain and nondescript. The o...

Handleman was the company that served the big discount and variety chains, as well as Best Buy. They also supplied books to the same stores and various other media. Kresge was their first big client and they grew from there, but they never had a big presence in other retailers other than selling che...

Rather than make huge cut and pastes, let me follow-up on a couple excellent points form Clown Leach: The real estate based strategy for cutting costs should ultimately cause as many/more problems as it solved. Some businesses have made it work in the past and, at least right now, they may be tellin...

You need to explore old newspapers, as well as the public docs storewanderer mentioned. basically, you need to play historian. Sometimes developers act as though they've recruited tenants but really haven't. One of the DeBartolo malls had an anchor space signposted for a store that never expressed i...

Endless shrimp was probably the least of their problems. The food has been going down hill for a long time.

NW Indiana is not that integrated with Chicago. National, Jewel and Dominick's never had many stores there. Strack & Van Til probably were able to survive in part because Jewel only has 4 stores in the area, all in peripheral areas and 2 of them near the Illinois line. There's no tradition of In...

Here's a list of the most recent closures. https://www.fastcompany.com/91091797/rite-aid-stores-closing-list-map-april-2024-update. I'm guessing they couldn't re-negotiate leases because the locations are such a mix of urban, suburban, small town in the middle of nowhere, etc., although no place jum...

They have these in scattered places and they probably recognize some sort of location advantage. There's one I regularly pass on Van Aken Blvd in Shaker Heights, Ohio. It's part of a strip that went up in the early 50s. It's probably the very short-lived Krogerthat became other businesses including ...

It's not a law, it's the decision of a professional board. They are given regulatory power over the profession by law, but this kind of rule making takes them into areas that probably are more difficult for them to enforce. It's not like setting standards to sit for a licensing exam or be able to re...