I have had nothing but positive service experiences with Dillards in Reno, but I have noticed out of town when I have made purchases the service has been rather indifferent.buckguy wrote: ↑April 26th, 2018, 11:22 am Dillards has been absolute failure in the Midwest--Cleveland and Cincinnati have seen a lot of store closings and the remaining stores were neglected for many years. Dillard also has its own problems, generally---a declining sales trend for many years. They operate as a piggy bank for the Dillard family---the company has been continually buying back stock which means it's increasingly easier to pay a decent dividend to the Dillard family. Their onetime main attraction to Wall Street was their centralized buying which meant that the stores weren't very interesting other than a few upscale "flagship" locations. Their stores have always been bereft of service--that seemed to be the first thing to go when they bought other chains and the merchandising isn't very inventive (all that centralized buying)--a lot of boring store brand merchandise. i doubt that they have the spare capital to buy many or even any Bon Ton stores and they'd probably end up closing half of them if they did.
If anyone would be close to the Bon Ton model and I'm thinking the eastern Bon Ton & Elder Beerman stores, it would be Belk, but they have shown no inclination to go into northern markets and have sold stores in those locations when they've come with acquisitions.
Their dividend is only 40 cents per share (less than 1% yield) so they definitely need to have a lot of shares held by the family to get much out of the dividends. What I think may be happening with the ongoing stock buybacks is a very slow move to take the company private.
I think missteps of Macy's over the past few years have greatly benefited Dillards.
We will see if any of Bon Ton's stuff goes to Dillards. I believe Dillards owns most of its real estate, among other things, like a construction operation to build stores. Dillards store count has also remained pretty consistent the past few years, I think they are down something like 5 stores from 5 years ago. That is a lot better "hold up" of store count than the competitors...