Retail Watchers

One of the largest credit unions in Nevada closed all of its drive-up tellers in favor of interactive teller machines (ITMs) staffed by a call center in Reno. It is often faster to receive ITM service than from a person inside the same building. I saw the same thing with a large credit union in Ore...

The 26,000 square foot downtown Walgreens in Philadelphia will close in February. This store replaced an abandoned Borders Books. This store opened up with a larger than normal selection of prepared foods. It was a step above the regular Walgreens. They have a very large two level store in DC, whic...

I wondered how they were going to rollout stores over such a large territory. It may be that they are starting with large "destination" stores like those built by Wegman's. Zionsville is the kind of place that probably gets corporate transfers which might make it open to something new rat...

I wondered how they were going to rollout stores over such a large territory. It may be that they are starting with large "destination" stores like those built by Wegman's. Zionsville is the kind of place that probably gets corporate transfers which might make it open to something new rath...

They seem to be very inconsistent with malls. They have a mall store in the Indiana suburbs of Chicago that moved to a new non-mall across the street. In the Cleveland area, the Great Lakes Mall store has no mall entrance while the South Park store does (both new builds). My guess is that they take ...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kohls-shares-surge-30-on-takeover-bids-for-retailer-11643035296 Kohl's is reporting that several different private equity firms have expressed interest in an acquisition of the chain. One bid would value the chain at around $9 billion (approximately $64 per share) and a...

IKEA owns the property. As of last fall, they had pushed back the opening to sometime this year because of delays in the buildout. IKEA has opened "design studios" (no inventory) locations in NYC and will open 2 in LA this spring. One in NYC has closed and is supposed to be relocated while...

They announced a switch to smaller format stores a few years ago---apparently a response to more shopping going online. They stopped building new stores and put some on hold when they made the announcement, so the size thing is not surprising, They have more urban locations outside the US, so a down...

The overbuilding of the drug store chains came fairly recently and their niche has more competition with Target, Trader Joe's and concentrations of big boxes. They probably didn't benefit from the demise of A&P (which had been slowly shrinking) and there are signs of life in Gristede's (the loca...

Here is a strange closure. 24 hour store, busy area in NYC. New logo applied outside. Looking at the photos of the store this is easily the nicest looking Rite Aid I've ever seen. It has the later Wellness package but has upgraded tile flooring and just looks really, really good. I am assuming some...