Rite Aid closing at least 63 stores

[babs]

They made some fundamentally bad decisions as they grew and this ultimately constrained their options. Thrifty-Payless was losing money.

Correction, Thrifty Payless was a profitable $5 billion company before the Rite Aid acquisition. Happy to share the history of that company but don't post that they were unprofitable.

[storewanderer]

Thrifty Payless was actually quite profitable. While it didn't have as good of performance as the old Longs chain did, it was absolutely profitable. However Rite Aid quickly made a lot of changes that definitely hurt the store performance some of which was quickly retracted when Bob Miller arrived as CEO.

[pseudo3d]

Some of the worst business failures have been chains that decided "no matter what" they were going to execute a chain wide remodel to make over their stores into something different and they bankrupted themselves due to unexpected sales impacts from the process.

To be honest, I'm having trouble even thinking of one. There have been some chains that remerchandised and that led to their demise as customers got turned off. Montgomery Ward and Service Merchandise both attempted big remodels at the very end of their lifespans but financially, they were on the ropes and in the bigger picture the remodels weren't what was the make or break issue.

[storewanderer]

How can this chain survive with stores that look like this?

What is going on here?

These are busy stores. I went into a couple obviously not busy stores that did not quite look this bad.

[storewanderer]

A different location.

This is so unimaginably bad and disappointing.

I have never seen it get this bad on inventory for a typical food/drug chain before. I've seen one store independents who ran into disputes with wholesalers like this before...

[babs]

I saw the same thing in the Portland market as well over the weekend. They look like they are out of business.

[Retailuser]

Wow.
As the store listing now says 1,687.

[FrankMoore99]

How can this chain survive with stores that look like this?

What is going on here?

These are busy stores. I went into a couple obviously not busy stores that did not quite look this bad.

Those stores look like newer stores. This was a lot older store that is now closed, but when I went a few months ago, there were sections that were blocked off, and they had no Thrifty Ice Cream. Since it received no remodel and didn't have a Thrifty Ice Cream counter and low inventory and there is another Rite Aid in town that still operates and two other drug stores (CVS and Walgreens(which recently closed that location. Maybe an indicator that Rite Aid was the busier drug store.)) and a Walmart, Target, and Safeway with a pharmacy, why did Rite Aid keep operating it till January of this year and even received the new sign, while the location in Cameron Park that was brand new received nothing and closed two years earlier. That is surprising to see newer and busier stores struggle with this inventory. The stores look very nice inside, especially for a drug store. https://haydenbusinessblog.blogspot.com ... g-set.html

[BillyGr]

Are any of those stores that look so bad ones that were on the potential closings list but then they worked out with the landlord to keep them?

Thinking that the one in this area that has more of this issue (though it did have quite a bit of stuff in the seasonal section, so "new" stuff was obviously arriving now) was one of those that was in about the last or second to last list of settled leases, so possibly that they were sending less merchandise to those stores in case they did wind up closing them, and just haven't gotten "caught up" yet on stocking them in some sections?

[storewanderer]

Are any of those stores that look so bad ones that were on the potential closings list but then they worked out with the landlord to keep them?

Thinking that the one in this area that has more of this issue (though it did have quite a bit of stuff in the seasonal section, so "new" stuff was obviously arriving now) was one of those that was in about the last or second to last list of settled leases, so possibly that they were sending less merchandise to those stores in case they did wind up closing them, and just haven't gotten "caught up" yet on stocking them in some sections?

I have photos of 2 or 3 other stores that look the same as the above... these seemed like BUSY stores.

I don't think this is like the stores that were getting shorted inventory back in October/November/December... this is really bad.