99 CENT ONLY closing

[storewanderer]

I think the liquidation has been very successful. Many of the SoCal stores have only general merchandise remaining, with everything left marked 80% off. I don’t think the general merchandise was ever a hit…. 50-80% off sales were fairly common. This stuff was added in the last few years - high margin (at full price) stuff they hoped would turn fortunes around. But obviously most of it was junk that could readily be purchased for less at flea markets.

Foothills Ranch is still fully stocked, which is unbelievable. Really only laundry detergant and cleaning supplies are gone, with pantry gradually dwindling. Liquidation sales gives you some insight onto their sellers — they had boxes and boxes of deodorant and now they’re mostly gone. That’s gotta put a dent into Colgate’s production - who’s going to buy all that Speed Stick? Walmart and Target barely carry it anymore.

I agree. I visited a few final-day stores in Houston, all starting at 20 Items/$5. There was a tiny bit of food (canned goods and some moldy cookies), but other than that, only party supplies remained in any real quantity. Fixture sales were clearly booming, too. I only went to one non-closing store. It is the largest location I know of, a former Phar-Mor, and it was well stocked. It did not have produce, but it still had frozen and refrigerated food. Small sections of shelving were bare, but there were no large gaps. It is obviously all liquidator merchandise, though there are no vendor products. One of the stores I visited had liquidators there, and I found that the other stores' sales should be over by the end of May, at least in Houston.

The drop dead date is June 5, by that date everything is supposed to be 100% wound down. Many stores seem to have been told June 3 is the latest date they will be open but nobody really knows when these will close.

I was very surprised the fixture sales ended upon closure of the stores. I thought they'd stay open for a day or two to complete additional fixture sales, but they do not appear to be doing that.

I think they have some strategies they can use to empty these stores out very quickly if they have a block of say 50 stores they want to close within the next 7 days. They can start with the "cart" promotion of some flat price for an entire cartfull of goods, then this 10/20 items for $5 thing, etc.

There seem to be well stocked stores still scattered around. My read is these stores are ones that did not perform well. There is a store in Folsom, CA which I have been watching for a while as it seemed to have very little business, and it was on the list to close today. It did not close and is still at 40% off maximum discount and the aisles in there are still probably 80% stocked on non food and 50% stocked on food (more than that in frozen/refrigerated).

I haven't seen any liquidator merchandise yet in any of the closures I've been to. I've been in Los Angeles area, Sacramento area, and the 3 around Reno. Everything is 99 merchandise. A lot of it does look like liquidator product but it is actually their stuff. I wonder if the TX warehouse didn't have enough product so they got the liquidators to add stuff for them. I am sore about that TX thing because I honestly think TX has hurt them for many years.. I may be wrong. I have heard other theories that CA got to be a major problem the past few years due to theft and high operating costs. I just think the company didn't successfully transition from 99 cent price point to higher price points and did not have the right merchandise and lost a lot of customers and factors like TX being iffy for them in the first place combined with increasing issues in CA only made it worse.

Rite Aid liquidations on the other hand are getting a LOT of liquidator merchandise.

[HoustonRetail]

I think the liquidation has been very successful. Many of the SoCal stores have only general merchandise remaining, with everything left marked 80% off. I don’t think the general merchandise was ever a hit…. 50-80% off sales were fairly common. This stuff was added in the last few years - high margin (at full price) stuff they hoped would turn fortunes around. But obviously most of it was junk that could readily be purchased for less at flea markets.

Foothills Ranch is still fully stocked, which is unbelievable. Really only laundry detergant and cleaning supplies are gone, with pantry gradually dwindling. Liquidation sales gives you some insight onto their sellers — they had boxes and boxes of deodorant and now they’re mostly gone. That’s gotta put a dent into Colgate’s production - who’s going to buy all that Speed Stick? Walmart and Target barely carry it anymore.

I agree. I visited a few final-day stores in Houston, all starting at 20 Items/$5. There was a tiny bit of food (canned goods and some moldy cookies), but other than that, only party supplies remained in any real quantity. Fixture sales were clearly booming, too. I only went to one non-closing store. It is the largest location I know of, a former Phar-Mor, and it was well stocked. It did not have produce, but it still had frozen and refrigerated food. Small sections of shelving were bare, but there were no large gaps. It is obviously all liquidator merchandise, though there are no vendor products. One of the stores I visited had liquidators there, and I found that the other stores' sales should be over by the end of May, at least in Houston.

The drop dead date is June 5, by that date everything is supposed to be 100% wound down. Many stores seem to have been told June 3 is the latest date they will be open but nobody really knows when these will close.

I was very surprised the fixture sales ended upon closure of the stores. I thought they'd stay open for a day or two to complete additional fixture sales, but they do not appear to be doing that.

I think they have some strategies they can use to empty these stores out very quickly if they have a block of say 50 stores they want to close within the next 7 days. They can start with the "cart" promotion of some flat price for an entire cartfull of goods, then this 10/20 items for $5 thing, etc.

There seem to be well stocked stores still scattered around. My read is these stores are ones that did not perform well. There is a store in Folsom, CA which I have been watching for a while as it seemed to have very little business, and it was on the list to close today. It did not close and is still at 40% off maximum discount and the aisles in there are still probably 80% stocked on non food and 50% stocked on food (more than that in frozen/refrigerated).

I haven't seen any liquidator merchandise yet in any of the closures I've been to. I've been in Los Angeles area, Sacramento area, and the 3 around Reno. Everything is 99 merchandise. A lot of it does look like liquidator product but it is actually their stuff. I wonder if the TX warehouse didn't have enough product so they got the liquidators to add stuff for them. I am sore about that TX thing because I honestly think TX has hurt them for many years.. I may be wrong. I have heard other theories that CA got to be a major problem the past few years due to theft and high operating costs. I just think the company didn't successfully transition from 99 cent price point to higher price points and did not have the right merchandise and lost a lot of customers and factors like TX being iffy for them in the first place combined with increasing issues in CA only made it worse.

Rite Aid liquidations on the other hand are getting a LOT of liquidator merchandise.

Odd, I was told last week they'd be open Monday for fixture sales, but that could be incorrect info. I'm not sure what the deal is with the liquidator merchandise. I'm guessing it was low GM stock; they seemed to have plenty of food backstock, but the GM was the bulk of obvious liquidator merchandise. Light fixtures from a hardware store with ripped-off stickers were the most obvious to me. I will have to sort through my photos to see what else I can find, but it was similar odd lots. Oh, an interesting note: the full-stock store I visited had an entire Christmas aisle. I guess they thought they were going to make it a bit longer.

As for the notion that Texas hurt them, I don't think that is exactly the case. I've seen multiple mentions of it here, and I would love to hear the ideas, but 99 Cents only certainly had a niche here. The problems that brought them down here, were the same as California. There is some evidence that Texas was better off than people assume. They arrived here while still at a single price point and provided enough competition that Kroger piloted a Dollar Store format at some of the Albertsons they bought (in the Garden Centers). They actually did really well with grocery here straight from the start. The first produce coolers I recall seeing were added, maybe in 2005. The current ones are actually sconed gen for Houston. Our stores also started carrying full-price milk in 2004 (though maybe that was everywhere). At the start, they had been selling 2-gallon jugs as loss leaders and swapped them for single-gallon jugs. When milk prices spiked, they brought back the 2-gallon jugs for a slightly higher than grocery premium, supposedly due to customer demand. When the 2008 closures occurred, about 1/3 of the stores closed reopened within a month. The final new store to open (2022) was in El Paso, and two more Texas locations were planned but canceled, as already mentioned in this thread. The purchase by PE started a good attempt at building 20 stores in Texas, but for whatever reason they stopped in 2015.

I also understand they did tremendous business via Bargain Wholesale for quite a while, but my I believe most of that business dried up with price hikes.

[storewanderer]

Odd, I was told last week they'd be open Monday for fixture sales, but that could be incorrect info. I'm not sure what the deal is with the liquidator merchandise. I'm guessing it was low GM stock; they seemed to have plenty of food backstock, but the GM was the bulk of obvious liquidator merchandise. Light fixtures from a hardware store with ripped-off stickers were the most obvious to me. I will have to sort through my photos to see what else I can find, but it was similar odd lots. Oh, an interesting note: the full-stock store I visited had an entire Christmas aisle. I guess they thought they were going to make it a bit longer.

As for the notion that Texas hurt them, I don't think that is exactly the case. I've seen multiple mentions of it here, and I would love to hear the ideas, but 99 Cents only certainly had a niche here. The problems that brought them down here, were the same as California. There is some evidence that Texas was better off than people assume. They arrived here while still at a single price point and provided enough competition that Kroger piloted a Dollar Store format at some of the Albertsons they bought (in the Garden Centers). They actually did really well with grocery here straight from the start. The first produce coolers I recall seeing were added, maybe in 2005. The current ones are actually sconed gen for Houston. Our stores also started carrying full-price milk in 2004 (though maybe that was everywhere). At the start, they had been selling 2-gallon jugs as loss leaders and swapped them for single-gallon jugs. When milk prices spiked, they brought back the 2-gallon jugs for a slightly higher than grocery premium, supposedly due to customer demand. When the 2008 closures occurred, about 1/3 of the stores closed reopened within a month. The final new store to open (2022) was in El Paso, and two more Texas locations were planned but canceled, as already mentioned in this thread. The purchase by PE started a good attempt at building 20 stores in Texas, but for whatever reason they stopped in 2015.

I also understand they did tremendous business via Bargain Wholesale for quite a while, but my I believe most of that business dried up with price hikes.

Supposedly they already have/had Christmas and Halloween merchandise in their warehouses for 2024 holiday period, but it was unclear if that was getting distributed out or quite what was going to happen with it. It sounds like at least some of it got distributed out. The other possibility is the store had an entire aisle of Christmas stuff from a prior year that was either packed up or left in the back room and never put out when it was supposed to be put out. The amount of Easter stuff in their liquidation sales was massive, as if they had an entire extra year worth of that too.

I thought they were staying open for fixture sales too- all afternoon today and also Monday. Some stores barely even tried on fixture sales it felt like.

I don't think they had the store density they needed in TX for it to make sense, and they were sourcing too many items from CA. They needed more TX-based suppliers but I don't think they had enough stores.

Did they supply El Paso out of Houston or out of SoCal? Houston is 750 miles and SoCal is 800 miles. Isolated either way.

[HoustonRetail]

Odd, I was told last week they'd be open Monday for fixture sales, but that could be incorrect info. I'm not sure what the deal is with the liquidator merchandise. I'm guessing it was low GM stock; they seemed to have plenty of food backstock, but the GM was the bulk of obvious liquidator merchandise. Light fixtures from a hardware store with ripped-off stickers were the most obvious to me. I will have to sort through my photos to see what else I can find, but it was similar odd lots. Oh, an interesting note: the full-stock store I visited had an entire Christmas aisle. I guess they thought they were going to make it a bit longer.

As for the notion that Texas hurt them, I don't think that is exactly the case. I've seen multiple mentions of it here, and I would love to hear the ideas, but 99 Cents only certainly had a niche here. The problems that brought them down here, were the same as California. There is some evidence that Texas was better off than people assume. They arrived here while still at a single price point and provided enough competition that Kroger piloted a Dollar Store format at some of the Albertsons they bought (in the Garden Centers). They actually did really well with grocery here straight from the start. The first produce coolers I recall seeing were added, maybe in 2005. The current ones are actually sconed gen for Houston. Our stores also started carrying full-price milk in 2004 (though maybe that was everywhere). At the start, they had been selling 2-gallon jugs as loss leaders and swapped them for single-gallon jugs. When milk prices spiked, they brought back the 2-gallon jugs for a slightly higher than grocery premium, supposedly due to customer demand. When the 2008 closures occurred, about 1/3 of the stores closed reopened within a month. The final new store to open (2022) was in El Paso, and two more Texas locations were planned but canceled, as already mentioned in this thread. The purchase by PE started a good attempt at building 20 stores in Texas, but for whatever reason they stopped in 2015.

I also understand they did tremendous business via Bargain Wholesale for quite a while, but my I believe most of that business dried up with price hikes.

Supposedly they already have/had Christmas and Halloween merchandise in their warehouses for 2024 holiday period, but it was unclear if that was getting distributed out or quite what was going to happen with it. It sounds like at least some of it got distributed out. The other possibility is the store had an entire aisle of Christmas stuff from a prior year that was either packed up or left in the back room and never put out when it was supposed to be put out. The amount of Easter stuff in their liquidation sales was massive, as if they had an entire extra year worth of that too.

I thought they were staying open for fixture sales too- all afternoon today and also Monday. Some stores barely even tried on fixture sales it felt like.

I don't think they had the store density they needed in TX for it to make sense, and they were sourcing too many items from CA. They needed more TX-based suppliers but I don't think they had enough stores.

Did they supply El Paso out of Houston or out of SoCal? Houston is 750 miles and SoCal is 800 miles. Isolated either way.

Yeah I got the impression Christmas was for the upcoming year. It all looked new and honestly nicer than anything else at the liquidation. The Easter stuff hadn't even made it off the shelves by the time sale was announced, so some of that was still around.

I think they had a decent Texas store base by the end, and the work to build more stores as a failed hail mary was a step in the right direction. However, I can also understand where 99 Cents Only came from with their initial slate of Houston stores. Their playbook of taking over old major retailer leases put them at some nice high-traffic corners with cheap rent. However, I agree they should have tried to fill in more. I can't speak for the suppliers in any detail, but I know they did source groceries locally. They self-distributed through a small portion of the Albertsons cold warehouse they kept.

I'm not sure about the El Paso store, but I would wager it is Houston. It would make sense, as there are stores between Katy and El Paso. It also has a Texas Store Number, another oddity that should be discussed. The store numbers here are four digits, all starting with 28, unlike the rest of the company, which uses single, double, or triple-digit numbers with no prefixes. It's just a guess on my part, but I think they may have inherited these numbers from Albertsons. The Houston division started off with 27XX store numbers, and was set to move on to 28XX but never did before shutting down. It's my sincere belief that Albertsons left behind something with the 2800 numbering system in place that 99 Cents Only simply adopted. I would assume Albertsons took at least some of the 2700 numberings because some of those stores continued to operate.

[storewanderer]

Yeah I got the impression Christmas was for the upcoming year. It all looked new and honestly nicer than anything else at the liquidation. The Easter stuff hadn't even made it off the shelves by the time sale was announced, so some of that was still around.

I think they had a decent Texas store base by the end, and the work to build more stores as a failed hail mary was a step in the right direction. However, I can also understand where 99 Cents Only came from with their initial slate of Houston stores. Their playbook of taking over old major retailer leases put them at some nice high-traffic corners with cheap rent. However, I agree they should have tried to fill in more. I can't speak for the suppliers in any detail, but I know they did source groceries locally. They self-distributed through a small portion of the Albertsons cold warehouse they kept.

I'm not sure about the El Paso store, but I would wager it is Houston. It would make sense, as there are stores between Katy and El Paso. It also has a Texas Store Number, another oddity that should be discussed. The store numbers here are four digits, all starting with 28, unlike the rest of the company, which uses single, double, or triple-digit numbers with no prefixes. It's just a guess on my part, but I think they may have inherited these numbers from Albertsons. The Houston division started off with 27XX store numbers, and was set to move on to 28XX but never did before shutting down. It's my sincere belief that Albertsons left behind something with the 2800 numbering system in place that 99 Cents Only simply adopted. I would assume Albertsons took at least some of the 2700 numberings because some of those stores continued to operate.

I didn't realize what that one single store they took over in El Paso was- that was a longtime El Paso small grocery chain's last store, near downtown, practically right at the border crossing. It actually wasn't a bad store and I was surprised it closed. It is unfortunate that store is going dark again.

I'll be interested to see that Christmas stuff. While my stores are closed I plan to visit other markets and see the stores that are still open while they are open.

Also I read in the bankruptcy filing they had some kind of chemical issue caused when a landlord-contracted contractor was doing repairs to refrigeration with the Houston Warehouse in 2023 that disruputed all elements of the operations for months. This was a serious issue for them. That was right around the time I was in TX and the stores I went into there looked terrible and so did my local stores in NV (supplied by CA warehouse). They reportedly lost quite a bit of inventory from this incident in the TX warehouse.

Let's see if anyone can save at least part of the chain. But I don't see the TX part being saved. I see a chunk of SoCal being saved and maybe part of NorCal and Las Vegas. I don't see Phoenix being saved either.

Maybe 99 Only got some kind of warehouse systems from Albertsons.

The NV Stores followed a numbering system that was consistent with CA Stores.

[ClownLoach]

Yeah I got the impression Christmas was for the upcoming year. It all looked new and honestly nicer than anything else at the liquidation. The Easter stuff hadn't even made it off the shelves by the time sale was announced, so some of that was still around.

I think they had a decent Texas store base by the end, and the work to build more stores as a failed hail mary was a step in the right direction. However, I can also understand where 99 Cents Only came from with their initial slate of Houston stores. Their playbook of taking over old major retailer leases put them at some nice high-traffic corners with cheap rent. However, I agree they should have tried to fill in more. I can't speak for the suppliers in any detail, but I know they did source groceries locally. They self-distributed through a small portion of the Albertsons cold warehouse they kept.

I'm not sure about the El Paso store, but I would wager it is Houston. It would make sense, as there are stores between Katy and El Paso. It also has a Texas Store Number, another oddity that should be discussed. The store numbers here are four digits, all starting with 28, unlike the rest of the company, which uses single, double, or triple-digit numbers with no prefixes. It's just a guess on my part, but I think they may have inherited these numbers from Albertsons. The Houston division started off with 27XX store numbers, and was set to move on to 28XX but never did before shutting down. It's my sincere belief that Albertsons left behind something with the 2800 numbering system in place that 99 Cents Only simply adopted. I would assume Albertsons took at least some of the 2700 numberings because some of those stores continued to operate.

I didn't realize what that one single store they took over in El Paso was- that was a longtime El Paso small grocery chain's last store, near downtown, practically right at the border crossing. It actually wasn't a bad store and I was surprised it closed. It is unfortunate that store is going dark again.

I'll be interested to see that Christmas stuff. While my stores are closed I plan to visit other markets and see the stores that are still open while they are open.

Also I read in the bankruptcy filing they had some kind of chemical issue caused when a landlord-contracted contractor was doing repairs to refrigeration with the Houston Warehouse in 2023 that disruputed all elements of the operations for months. This was a serious issue for them. That was right around the time I was in TX and the stores I went into there looked terrible and so did my local stores in NV (supplied by CA warehouse). They reportedly lost quite a bit of inventory from this incident in the TX warehouse.

Let's see if anyone can save at least part of the chain. But I don't see the TX part being saved. I see a chunk of SoCal being saved and maybe part of NorCal and Las Vegas. I don't see Phoenix being saved either.

Maybe 99 Only got some kind of warehouse systems from Albertsons.

The NV Stores followed a numbering system that was consistent with CA Stores.

Aldi is looking for rookie District Managers in the Moreno Valley division again, fresh out of college or just finishing up. I think there is some truth to the rumors they're going to acquire a lot of the NorCal, Nevada, and Arizona leases. Wonder where they'll build a warehouse to fulfill from?

[HCal]

Aldi is looking for rookie District Managers in the Moreno Valley division again, fresh out of college or just finishing up. I think there is some truth to the rumors they're going to acquire a lot of the NorCal, Nevada, and Arizona leases. Wonder where they'll build a warehouse to fulfill from?

Rookie district managers? I would think that being a district manager of an international retailer would require years of experience. Are these actual district managers, or some sort of assistants/interns?

[ClownLoach]

Aldi is looking for rookie District Managers in the Moreno Valley division again, fresh out of college or just finishing up. I think there is some truth to the rumors they're going to acquire a lot of the NorCal, Nevada, and Arizona leases. Wonder where they'll build a warehouse to fulfill from?

Rookie district managers? I would think that being a district manager of an international retailer would require years of experience. Are these actual district managers, or some sort of assistants/interns?

To be clear, they're looking for District Managers In Training who are finishing up their degrees. They have a training program that is almost a year long. The pay and benefits in my opinion are poor based on what is shown. That is a stressful job and I would expect more than two weeks of vacation after two years. They do provide a company car so you don't have to run your own into the ground, but then you can make a lot of money driving your own car at other companies with non taxable mileage reimbursement if you are willing to drive something economical like a Prius. There was no mention of a bonus plan or long term incentive. I am assuming they pay more and don't train for a year if you're experienced, but the open positions for those were mainly back East unfortunately so they would not work for me. Pay seemed comparable to what Target offers a Store Manager right out of college as well. An experienced District Manager should be able to easily make double what they're offering with far better benefits elsewhere.

[storewanderer]

Aldi is looking for rookie District Managers in the Moreno Valley division again, fresh out of college or just finishing up. I think there is some truth to the rumors they're going to acquire a lot of the NorCal, Nevada, and Arizona leases. Wonder where they'll build a warehouse to fulfill from?

Rookie district managers? I would think that being a district manager of an international retailer would require years of experience. Are these actual district managers, or some sort of assistants/interns?

This is like the Dollar General of grocery so this is exactly what I'd expect to see them do. And based on how the stores I see in SoCal being run this is exactly the type of "management" they have. Terrible management, doesn't respond to complaints left with the corporate complaint line, apathetic employees in the store, no accountability for anything. No offense to Dollar General to compare Aldi to them. I do consider Dollar General to be of a higher quality operation than Dollar Tree or Family Dollar.

On the other hand this Aldi is so formula based, also has a relatively low number of employees per store, no fresh departments to deal with, that maybe the District Manager role doesn't require the degree of talent it does at most other retailers. An Aldi is less complex to run than many other retail models. It is perhaps about as complex to run as a Dollar Tree.

[veteran+]

This rookie DM smells a bit like F&E....................what could go wrong?

No matter the cookie cutter format (very F&E) you need seasoned folks (well versed in the local market) to establish a NEW Brand.

F&E did not even want grocery retail experience at first. That changed of course and the only stores that did well were run by experienced grocers. The top 5 stores were run by the most experienced grocers.

Good luck with that Aldi.