Retail Watchers

A lot of the West Coast drugstores (Thrifty, PayLess, Longs, and Pay 'N Save) did double duty as general merchandise stores, especially in the days before Walmart. (a few stores still serve this purpose in smaller towns to some extent) The old PayLess stores for example had full departments such as ...

I don't participate in Black Friday at all. With that said, one thing I have noticed about JCPenney and their stores in the Portland area is that, unlike Sears, they always have a fair number of customers in the stores. It doesn't matter what time of year. The problems tend to be disorganized stores...

While I can't speak for other areas where Kroger operates, Fred Meyer seems to be doing OK in my area. Prices are usually competitive and on some items such as milk are the same as WInCo. It seems that the Fred Meyer format would generate more volume so they could be better on price.

The Sears bankruptcy may be having an effect on sales at the Sears Hometown stores. I have noticed that there are now suddenly a lot of radio ads for the local Sears Hometown store, including some saying they are not part of the chain closures. It would make sense at this point to rebrand these sto...

Better operators/better store directors frequently walk departments to monitor conditions but in the Target world I get the impression the store management is generally in the office. I worked at a Target store for a couple years in the early 1990s. In that time we went through four store managers....

The merger was definitely bad news. Kmart just coming off of bankruptcy, and Sears striking out like crazy with every initiative they tried. Kmart did come out of bankruptcy posting slight profits, though. I don't know if the long-range Kmart survival would've been gone even in 2003. They had lost ...

I am not sure CVS wants the large retail spaces in shopping centers that would be provided through a purchase of Rite Aid in OR, WA, and ID. Most (not all) CVS large stores in CA look terrible; poorly stocked, poorly maintained, and very clear that they do not want large stores. These look even wor...

Save Mart and Kmart are in the same shopping center (along with a huge closed Rite Aid that relocated down the road). So I wonder if the Kmart is also repairable? If they can get repairs made before the company goes... I would not expect Kmart to reopen. They did not rebuild in Santa Rosa, although...

Safeway sure has had some bad luck with fires lately. First the store in Phoenix in July, now this one in Paradise. Was this in the NorCal division? I saw on google that it had a very old decor. Construction wise, I am guessing these grocery buildings in Paradise were not built like our grocery sto...

submariner wrote: ↑November 12th, 2018, 4:05 pm

storewanderer wrote: ↑November 12th, 2018, 10:47 am
"Tenants which have failed to evolve in order to satisfy an increasingly savvy consumer do not belong in our assets," Washington Prime CEO Lou Conforti said in a statement.

Savage.

Sears and Kmart stopped evolving around the time the two chains merged.