Retail Watchers

ClownLatch brings up some excellent points. I don’t agree chains have a natural flight — many (Denny’s,, Chili’s, Friday’s, etc.) have a managed to stay revelant even as their peers perished. And Texas Roadhouse continues to grow and thrive while Outback does the opposite… even though Texas Roadhou...

ClownLatch brings up some excellent points. I don’t agree chains have a natural flight — many (Denny’s,, Chili’s, Friday’s, etc.) have a managed to stay revelant even as their peers perished. And Texas Roadhouse continues to grow and thrive while Outback does the opposite… even though Texas Roadhou...

These are relatively high density areas, so more visits wouldn't be unusual, and individual sales might be on the low side. NJ is still a relatively small part of their footprint. These stores may be attached to something more profitable, otherwise I suspect Ahold would have sold them. They seem to ...

The main thing is that physical media has become a small niche item and no large national retailer is going to sell a lot of it. There always will be people who want to own rather than rent and collectors who like the "hunt" but they are not going to build volume for a Walmart or Target. ...

I was in a rather new one in Ohio a couple weeks ago. It was clean, busy and well kept. What struck me was the odd contrasts--they've spent some more on "decor" (3-d graphics and bright colors) particularly toward the back fo the store, whereas the front end is plain and nondescript. The o...

Handleman was the company that served the big discount and variety chains, as well as Best Buy. They also supplied books to the same stores and various other media. Kresge was their first big client and they grew from there, but they never had a big presence in other retailers other than selling che...

Rather than make huge cut and pastes, let me follow-up on a couple excellent points form Clown Leach: The real estate based strategy for cutting costs should ultimately cause as many/more problems as it solved. Some businesses have made it work in the past and, at least right now, they may be tellin...

You need to explore old newspapers, as well as the public docs storewanderer mentioned. basically, you need to play historian. Sometimes developers act as though they've recruited tenants but really haven't. One of the DeBartolo malls had an anchor space signposted for a store that never expressed i...

Endless shrimp was probably the least of their problems. The food has been going down hill for a long time.

NW Indiana is not that integrated with Chicago. National, Jewel and Dominick's never had many stores there. Strack & Van Til probably were able to survive in part because Jewel only has 4 stores in the area, all in peripheral areas and 2 of them near the Illinois line. There's no tradition of In...