Burlington Operations

[Alpha8472]

I visited a local Burlington the other day for the first time in years. It was a large store, but about one third of the store was empty. There was a huge empty area. The racks of clothing were also very lightly stocked. The selection was terrible compared to 3 years ago.

The shoe section was very small. The customer counts were very low. The store seemed like it had given up trying. There were no lines at checkout and just one cashier. Perhaps Burlington should downsize their stores if they are running them this empty.

[Brian Lutz]

The amount of inventory in these types of stores tends to ebb and flow, but Burlington stores seem to have by far the largest amount of variability in this sector, probably because they tend to have much larger stores. TJX seems to keep their stores pretty well stocked, but Ross stores can start looking rather thin toward the end of a season, and I've been in Burlington stores that looked like they were in the middle of a liquidation sale. Some of these stores have actually started to downsize and wall off portions of the sales floor, but even then they can look rather thin at times.

[storewanderer]

Burlington has downsized its stores in my area basically moving shelves from the perimeter to block large chunks of the sales floor. But the remaining space has been relatively well stocked. The products sort of come and go. They seem to be stocked much better than Ross.

I have been bored lately and gone into multiple Ross units. They do not seem busy at all but they have steady traffic. There is one busier Ross in Reno that is noticeably more stocked than the others (this is the oldest location). Their newer locations are smaller, closer together, and more neighborhood type stores vs. destination shopping area stores. I noticed at one I went into they have 6 checkstands but only have registers on 2 of the checkstands (and another at the customer service counter). They have all of the price tags attached to products not only with a usual tag plastic but then they put an ink security tag through the middle of the price tag so the employee has to remove the ink security tag before they can scan the product. I appreciate their efforts to ensure the tags get removed by the employee and also suspect this tactic makes "tag switching" much more difficult for dishonest customers.

When I made a purchase at Ross I noticed they had the machine that checks for bad money up on a pole and almost at eye level for the customer to see, then they had a big plastic sign posted that said "WE CHECK BILLS." It almost looked like they wanted the customer to insert their bills into that machine but I am not sure how it went as I was the only transaction in the 20 or so minutes I was in there. My purchase at Ross using a credit card was a breeze; they had me rung up and the tap function worked on their pinpad then the receipt printed out within 10-20 seconds despite the security tag thing causing a small delay, it was nothing. They had the bag on a rack like a supermarket and threw it in the bag and pulled the bag off and I was out of there. Checkout at Burlington is VERY painfully slow and you are in line forever, their system is slow, the bags are in a big pile under the counter and they have to get them out, open them, rearrange items on the counter to make room for the bag, they do not have tap to pay, really terrible checkout.

[buckguy]

The downsizing of Burlington stores has been discussed before. I've also noticed Marshall's doing this on a smaller scale, mostly by relocating to smaller locations. COVID has altered the availability of closeouts, but over the long-term retailers and manufacturers have increased their control over inventory, so the supply of true closeout merchandise keeps shrinking. Burlington seems to be stuck with the more relatively large stores than other chains and downsizing probably means some places truly downsize while others wait for buildouts.

[Super S]

The few Burlington locations I have been too seemed too big for what type of store they are. There is one on 82nd Ave. in Portland in an old Fred Meyer which I don't think uses the whole floor space that Fred Meyer used. Then you have stores like Salem, OR in an old two story Montgomery Ward, where they closed off the second floor that Burlington used at first.

In some ways this is no different than what Rite Aid has done with some of the huge stores they inherited from PayLess Drug, most of which have consolidated into smaller spaces.

[storewanderer]

Burlington has gone through a series of management and strategy changes since the 90's when they showed up out west. They have made a lot of changes to their merchandise mix and policies over the years.

The larger Burlington Store struck me as the type of thing you would drive past a Ross and Marshalls/TJ Maxx to get to, and spend some time digging through. Now that they have downsized their stores, yet have fewer stores than Ross, I am not sure if is worth driving past a Ross and a Marshalls/TJ Maxx to go to a Burlington.

There is still plenty of close out merchandise in the pipeline. Despite ongoing efforts of companies to control inventory and have fewer closeouts, the softlines industry is so saturated with inventory and so terrible at forecasting that it can't seem to help itself. The main different now is there are more stores with more customers than ever fighting for this close out merchandise. We did see some losses in competition for these goods when chains like Gordman's and Stein Mart went out of business, but Ross/TJX keep growing... Macy's Backstage appears to be growing... these places are all going after the same pool of closeout items. Macy's Backstage does not sell private labels from the regular Macy's, they go out and find other stuff.

[mbz321]

Macy's Backstage does not sell private labels from the regular Macy's, they go out and find other stuff.

Is that a fact? I almost never go into a Macy's, but on my last few walkthrough's, it definitely seemed like a place to dump clearance merchandise from the main store, along with 'outside items'.

[Alpha8472]

The Macy's Men's store at Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California had a Backstage store with its own aisles and cashier.

There was also a separate clearance area with racks of clearance items near the Men's clothing area. These two areas have different types of items and should not be mixed up unless employees are putting things in the wrong place.

[storewanderer]

Macy's Backstage does not sell private labels from the regular Macy's, they go out and find other stuff.

Is that a fact? I almost never go into a Macy's, but on my last few walkthrough's, it definitely seemed like a place to dump clearance merchandise from the main store, along with 'outside items'.

Yes. The Macy's private label items that go on clearance go to the "Last Act" department. "Last Act" is, at this time, not a part of Backstage. Backstage has separate products it gets. What exactly is the difference? Both Backstage and "Last Act" are excluded from coupons. I don't understand why they don't consolidate the two departments.

Backstage has its own program for clearance items (clearance based on whatever the Backstage price is) that go down a few dollars, etc. similar to how Ross handles clearance.

[arizonaguy]

I visited a local Burlington the other day for the first time in years. It was a large store, but about one third of the store was empty. There was a huge empty area. The racks of clothing were also very lightly stocked. The selection was terrible compared to 3 years ago.

The shoe section was very small. The customer counts were very low. The store seemed like it had given up trying. There were no lines at checkout and just one cashier. Perhaps Burlington should downsize their stores if they are running them this empty.

Burlington is building a new store near me in part of a closed Toys R Us. The Toys R Us was 50,000 square feet and Burlington is taking 22,000 square feet of it (which is far smaller than most other Burlington locations around town which seem to be in former Sears or Montgomery Wards stores).

What's interesting is that there is a Ross across the street and a Marshalls (in part of a former Fry's supermarket) a few blocks away. There also was a Bealls Outlet next door to the Ross but that store closed.