Kohl's To Open In-Store Babies R Us Shops

[Alpha8472]

Kohl's will open 200 Babies R Us shops in its stores in 33 states. The company says it hopes to have just as much success as opening Sephora stores inside of Kohl's.

https://chainstoreage.com/kohls-opening ... -locations

[storewanderer]

Never see any traffic in their Sephora shops.

Of course I am perhaps blind and am missing out on the big crowds that supposedly exist.

[Alpha8472]

I have never seen more than 1 or 2 people in those Sephora shops. I also wonder where Kohl's came up with these supposedly good sales numbers.

[babs]

Never see any traffic in their Sephora shops.

Of course I am perhaps blind and am missing out on the big crowds that supposedly exist.

The busiest area at Kohls is the Amazon counter. Second is Sephora. Now having said that, the Sephora's I have seen usually have 3-4 customers, about equal to the number of shoppers around the rest of the store. Not sure how they stay open.

[ClownLoach]

Never see any traffic in their Sephora shops.

Of course I am perhaps blind and am missing out on the big crowds that supposedly exist.

The busiest area at Kohls is the Amazon counter. Second is Sephora. Now having said that, the Sephora's I have seen usually have 3-4 customers, about equal to the number of shoppers around the rest of the store. Not sure how they stay open.

They are a $19B company with 1173 stores. So that puts each store at about $16 Million per year average revenue. Any store that puts $16 Million a year in the register is generally going to be able to stay open as there are a lot of costs they can control. A million per month plus and I would assume that a lot of those stores are locked in at low leases for decades or owned. Probably paying $50K in smaller towns per month and $100K in larger plus a small percentage rent threshold that they probably never hit. That is a lot of cash flow.

For comparison, TJX which always seems busier is a $54B company with about 5000 stores. So they're doing about $10M per store. Their rents are probably much higher per square foot because they have smaller boxes usually in busier centers.

[veteran+]

Never see any traffic in their Sephora shops.

Of course I am perhaps blind and am missing out on the big crowds that supposedly exist.

The busiest area at Kohls is the Amazon counter. Second is Sephora. Now having said that, the Sephora's I have seen usually have 3-4 customers, about equal to the number of shoppers around the rest of the store. Not sure how they stay open.

They are a $19B company with 1173 stores. So that puts each store at about $16 Million per year average revenue. Any store that puts $16 Million a year in the register is generally going to be able to stay open as there are a lot of costs they can control. A million per month plus and I would assume that a lot of those stores are locked in at low leases for decades or owned. Probably paying $50K in smaller towns per month and $100K in larger plus a small percentage rent threshold that they probably never hit. That is a lot of cash flow.

For comparison, TJX which always seems busier is a $54B company with about 5000 stores. So they're doing about $10M per store. Their rents are probably much higher per square foot because they have smaller boxes usually in busier centers.

Hmmmmmmmm, I don't know.

Around $300,000. a week in store volume for a department store in typical square footage does not sound like a lot of business. Perhaps higher non food product margins saves the day?

[ClownLoach]

The busiest area at Kohls is the Amazon counter. Second is Sephora. Now having said that, the Sephora's I have seen usually have 3-4 customers, about equal to the number of shoppers around the rest of the store. Not sure how they stay open.

They are a $19B company with 1173 stores. So that puts each store at about $16 Million per year average revenue. Any store that puts $16 Million a year in the register is generally going to be able to stay open as there are a lot of costs they can control. A million per month plus and I would assume that a lot of those stores are locked in at low leases for decades or owned. Probably paying $50K in smaller towns per month and $100K in larger plus a small percentage rent threshold that they probably never hit. That is a lot of cash flow.

For comparison, TJX which always seems busier is a $54B company with about 5000 stores. So they're doing about $10M per store. Their rents are probably much higher per square foot because they have smaller boxes usually in busier centers.

Hmmmmmmmm, I don't know.

Around $300,000. a week in store volume for a department store in typical square footage does not sound like a lot of business. Perhaps higher non food product margins saves the day?

Kohl's square footage is much less than traditional department stores though. Macy's and others have many stores in the 200K size with huge wasted basement, office and stock room spaces. Kohl's used to average 80K but now after years of shrinking I believe they're closer to 70K and almost all of that is on the sales floor. I remember visiting a few converted Mervyn's early on and they felt like the store size had nearly doubled because of the removal of offices, stock rooms and such.

Clothing is ridiculously high margin, and don't forget that Kohl's is very dependent on credit cards with high interest rates. Many of their frequent shoppers are "hooked" by the credit card. I don't know why people do that to themselves but they do. Kohl's was also an early investor in automation and energy efficiency. Before Walmart or Target had made any big strides Kohl's already had solar roofs on many stores and all lighting replaced with LED. They use computerized sale signs so no labor to change their ads. They have virtually no stock rooms due to meticulous computerized inventory management (except under the last CEO who tried to mess with their processes and assortment, we know how that went when the stores started overflowing with inventory that got blown out at 95% off). They don't pay commissions. They're making $300M a quarter in operation income on $5.9B in sales, that is respectable in what has been a declining industry. If they can keep that quarterly up that means $1.2B operations income on $20B in sales so they're not going to disappear any time soon. Seems to be stabilized versus the disaster under the former CEO.

For a comparison, Macy's has dropped to $23B and reduces about a billion a year with only $22B forecast for 2024. That means at going rate Kohl's will be larger than Macy's by 2027. Macy's operates 718 total stores (remember in other indexes they count two store malls as one store), so that's about $32M per store. But those are probably average 200,000 square foot beasts with horribly inefficient configurations, very labor intensive, and although they may own many sites they're also mall stores that have to pay a cut of sales as part of the anchor agreements. Macy's as a company of course is losing money despite all the remaining stores having positive income which shows a serious problem. And I wonder if they might have lower sales per square foot than Kohl's at this point already.

Listen, I'm not going to go out and buy stock in either company nor singing either one's praises because they both could be so much better than they are. Both have mismanaged themselves over the last decade plus. But I don't think either one is at risk of disappearing as was being speculated here which is why I decided to do the financial reporting. But if you compare Macy's current state to Kohl's, it is night and day at this point, at least Kohl's has slashed expenses and implemented efficiencies to get to a state of profit. Macy's has already admitted they have to spend money (by closing stores which is expensive) to make money, and they are still behind the 8 hall with more expensive properties that aren't going to get more efficient or into lower cost locations like Kohl's already operates.

[storewanderer]

Kohl's has really cleaned up its merchandising in my area. In terms of basic housekeeping- the stores are clean, and presentation is looking a lot better. They were really looking awful for a number of years, they felt like a dead chain that had just given up. But they seem to have learned how to do housekeeping and presentation again. The problem I see is the product- the product still isn't very good.

I am hoping they make some improvements to their products soon.

[ClownLoach]

Kohl's has really cleaned up its merchandising in my area. In terms of basic housekeeping- the stores are clean, and presentation is looking a lot better. They were really looking awful for a number of years, they felt like a dead chain that had just given up. But they seem to have learned how to do housekeeping and presentation again. The problem I see is the product- the product still isn't very good.

I am hoping they make some improvements to their products soon.

I see the big brands are returning slowly. Problem is they don't go on sale and are excluded from coupons. I saw many shirts I would have loved to buy but I'm not paying $65-70 full price. Even on clearance they're still too expensive. The house brands dominate the landscape and the quality is not up to par.

Store presentation and operations seem to be drastically improved. I do not see any two entrance stores reduced to one door anymore. Registers are open and staffed. Although I don't have that they stripped down the wall racking I understand why they did it, and at least now there are finally some wall graphics so the place doesn't look blank like it's going out of business.

[BillyGr]

Store presentation and operations seem to be drastically improved. I do not see any two entrance stores reduced to one door anymore. Registers are open and staffed. Although I don't have that they stripped down the wall racking I understand why they did it, and at least now there are finally some wall graphics so the place doesn't look blank like it's going out of business.

I did see one of those in this area (Clifton Park, NY) last week, where one set of doors is closed/blocked off. That store has both sets fairly close to each other, so it didn't seem to make a difference.
One other store to the south (Hudson) never had a second entry, while one in Colonie has two and would need both as one faces the front parking lot while the second is on the side to access a second parking area (that space was originally a Builder's Square store years ago).