Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

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arizonaguy
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Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by arizonaguy »

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart- ... res-2018-1

The Casa Grande, a Chandler, the Prescott Valley, and the Scottsdale store have closed in Arizona.
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by Brian Lutz »

It looks like all three Sam's Club stores I know of in the Seattle metro area (Aurora Avenue, Renton and Auburn) are on the list of closures, so this amounts to an exit from the Seattle market. This doesn't surprise me much though as Seattle is Costco's home turf.

It also means that Walmart now has zero stores in Seattle proper (and an extremely hostile city government that would most likely block them from opening any by all means at their disposal.)
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by wnetmacman »

ADMIN NOTE - As no actual number, only guesses have been posted, I have retitled this thread. Until Walmart certifies the number of store closings, anything you read in the media is hearsay, and should be treated as such.

Louisiana only lost one store, on the north side of Baton Rouge. It was a store in a really bad neighborhood from the beginning, and it was relocated a couple of years ago onto a Walmart pad when the Walmart moved next door.

At least 2 Houston stores closed, as did 3 in Alaska and one in Memphis that I have confirmed thus far.
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by arizonaguy »

Brian Lutz wrote: January 11th, 2018, 10:36 am It looks like all three Sam's Club stores I know of in the Seattle metro area (Aurora Avenue, Renton and Auburn) are on the list of closures, so this amounts to an exit from the Seattle market. This doesn't surprise me much though as Seattle is Costco's home turf.

It also means that Walmart now has zero stores in Seattle proper (and an extremely hostile city government that would most likely block them from opening any by all means at their disposal.)
Sam's Club didn't / doesn't do well in Costco's home markets (Seattle or San Diego (for Price Club) it seems.

Only one store in the San Diego area (which is still open) and only 3 (now all closed) in Seattle.

These closures seem to leave no Sam's Club stores in the entire PacNW (no Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, or Washington stores).

They appear to have also fully exited the Rochester, NY; Syracuse, NY; and Madison, WI markets.
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by wnetmacman »

Evidently, the official number is 63, with 10 becoming e-Commerce Fulfillment centers:

http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart- ... res-2018-1
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by SamSpade »

arizonaguy wrote: January 11th, 2018, 10:54 am These closures seem to leave no Sam's Club stores in the entire PacNW (no Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, or Washington stores).
There is a Sam's Club in Idaho Falls, ID. It opened before Walmart in this community. I would be surprised to see it close; the closest competitor is Costco 50 miles south in Pocatello.
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by klkla »

wnetmacman wrote: January 11th, 2018, 11:16 am Evidently, the official number is 63, with 10 becoming e-Commerce Fulfillment centers:

http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart- ... res-2018-1
From the article, "In some cases, employees were not told their store had closed before showing up to work on Thursday. Those employees learned their store would be closing when they found the store's doors locked and a notice announcing the closing, Sam's Club workers told Business Insider. At some stores, employees were turned away by police officers."

That's shocking to me. You would expect that kind of move from a company having finanical difficulties but not WalMart. I wonder why they handled it like this?
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by arizonaguy »

klkla wrote: January 11th, 2018, 1:39 pm
wnetmacman wrote: January 11th, 2018, 11:16 am Evidently, the official number is 63, with 10 becoming e-Commerce Fulfillment centers:

http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart- ... res-2018-1
From the article, "In some cases, employees were not told their store had closed before showing up to work on Thursday. Those employees learned their store would be closing when they found the store's doors locked and a notice announcing the closing, Sam's Club workers told Business Insider. At some stores, employees were turned away by police officers."

That's shocking to me. You would expect that kind of move from a company having finanical difficulties but not WalMart. I wonder why they handled it like this?
They probably wanted the stores to be fully staffed during the holiday / returns season and didn't want to lose employees before they decided to shutter the stores.

Walmart historically hasn't handled situations like this very well.
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by marshd1000 »

In the case of the Seattle Sam’s Club, since there isn’t a regular Walmart inside the Seattle City Limits, why couldn’t become a regular Walmart? I know Seattle City Government hates Walmart. But since Walmart already owns their building, why couldn’t it be converted to a regular Walmart? It should be the same zoning, I would think that the city council wouldn’t have a legal reason to prevent them from a Sam’s Club to Walmart conversion!
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Re: Multiple Sam's Club Stores to close

Post by arizonaguy »

SamSpade wrote: January 11th, 2018, 12:48 pm
arizonaguy wrote: January 11th, 2018, 10:54 am These closures seem to leave no Sam's Club stores in the entire PacNW (no Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, or Washington stores).
There is a Sam's Club in Idaho Falls, ID. It opened before Walmart in this community. I would be surprised to see it close; the closest competitor is Costco 50 miles south in Pocatello.
I wasn't aware of that store when I did a general search through the store locator.

However there aren't any Sam's Club stores in the Boise, Portland, Seattle, or Spokane metro areas (or now Alaska).

The Arizona store closures are the following:

Casa Grande: New store (opened 2013/2014) that was located in a location that was already questionable when it was built (as the Best Buy across the street had closed in the mass closings of 2012). The Target across the street closed in 2016 and it was just a matter of time before this store closed as the whole shopping area was built for exurban development that never materialized.

Chandler: A newer store that appears to be built for development that never happened. It also was on the opposite side of the freeway from the Walmart Supercenter and is close enough (within 8 miles) to 3 other Sam's Club stores.

Prescott Valley: Smaller metro area that also has a Costco. Probably could only support one warehouse club and Costco is stronger in the region (and the state overall). Sam's Club has the only warehouse store in Flagstaff, however.

Scottsdale: A city (and part of the metro area) that is absolutely dominated by Costco. There are 3 Costco stores within 15 minutes of this store and the busiest Costco store in the state is literally across the street.

This aerial view tells the story: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6228862 ... a=!3m1!1e3

The Costco parking lot is mostly full while the Sam's lot has barely any cars.

Also the Scottsdale Costco store (across the street) seems to have the largest selection of any store in the metro area (and rare items / wines) not found at any other store. The Sam's Club here seemed to have the run of the mill Sam's merchandise mix found everywhere else. This is also the only Sam's Club in the Phoenix area (that I know of) where the fuel center was open to the general public (non-members simply paid more).

I believe that the adjacent Walmart may take over the fuel center as it's already billed as a Sam's Club / Walmart fuel center (again, not seen at any other Sam's location): https://www.google.com/maps/@33.6243708 ... 312!8i6656
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