Retail Watchers

Losing their niche (willingly) was a big part of their ultimate decline. They would have had to compete with Aldi, but Aldi enters markets slowly and good management could have figured out how to make sure they had a strategy for that. Their ability to target families and to have items you wouldn't ...

They lived up to the name in the 90s. The stores were a hodgepodge of castoffs with a few purpose built stores. They had two stores almost across the street from each other in Langley Park in shabby looking castoffs---one looked like a pylon Safeway. Many were in lower income suburban areas, with a ...

It's something like 2.5% of their store count. Not enough to read too much into it.

https://www.foodtradenews.com/2021/11/16/safeway-buys-two-crofton-to-close-shoppers-food-down-to-20-b-w-units/ An incredible article from Jeff Metzger, detailing the latest aforementioned transaction, but most importantly covering the history of Shoppers. A refreshing account on how Shoppers rose t...

Some random thoughts, having lived in the Southeast and Indiana..... The Southeast lacks really strong fresh foods operations. Publix and H-T fill that gap but are not exceptional when you compare them to what's available in other regions. Wegman's may have sensed that in their decision to enter NC....

The Des Moines Register needs registration. Here's a Tennessean link via Yahoo: https://news.yahoo.com/grocery-chain-making-moves-tennessee-130039285.html They've cancelled plans for a DC near the Twin Cities and slowed the pace of their store openings in that areas. They've cancelled at least on pl...

Excellent topic. By way of explanation, I was a field auditor (mystery shopper) for KFC in 1987-1989, and worked at General Motors (franchise model for dealers) for the last 12 years of my career). At KFC, corporate job, HQ employee, traveled the US (others in the group got to go international too)...

They tended to be seen as a second string retailer in their segment---they never built the "brand equity" in their house brand merchandise that Sears or JCP had, even though it usually was of good quality. They rarely were recruited to anchor A-list malls. I'm sure there is some "good...

The Alaska cruises are popular with Asian tourists for whom shopping is an important part of travel---even in Asia this is true. They also draw a lot of people from small towns and smaller metros in the US. I used to fly Atlanta to Seattle a couple times a year and the planes would be full of cruise...

I would imagine that separate home store locations for Macy (and anyone else) will gradually go away. When Bloomingdales replaced their enormous White Flint store with a smaller one in Friendship Heights (about 10 years ago), furniture was the main thing to go and it had been drawing very few custo...