ClownLoach wrote: ↑December 26th, 2022, 11:37 am
My point is that if they wanted to make these remodels more impactful for the brand image they should have started with the highest volume "A" stores in the best centers in urban areas where they get the most bang for their buck. Of course they're closing stores in impactful highly visible urban areas like Burbank, and closing stores like Irvine 6 weeks after a "Grand Reopening". Nothing against Upland but my experience has been that it is a solid suburban market with stores at or slightly below chain average run rates in the companies I've worked for ("C" or "D" volume).
Their remodels are the classic example of just not getting it anyway; stores like Murrieta replaced every fixture and did a relay of every gondola location yet they still have the #1 most problematic detail BB&B is criticized for and that's the fact you can't see all 4 corners of the store because of the stupid wall gondola up the middle. Yes they remove a lot of the dividing walls elsewhere since they basically used to be a format of 2, 3, or 4 aisle valleys divided by floor to ceiling walls and a center store stockroom. There were probably a dozen or more smaller walls ruining sight lines before, but why leave any? So since they do all the rest of the work in the remodel (replacement of fixtures, resetting all planograms, floor repairs, building new stock rooms in the back corners) why in God's name do they put a front to back wall up the middle again when they're done wasting months of time and money they obviously don't have? This remodel program is even more of a waste than the program in which Rite Aid puts new signs on stores that close the next month.
You have to wonder if they were so clueless about what they were trying to become that they thought they should remodel in C/D markets to try and capture more customers in those markets with their lower end/private label items or something. There is no telling what they were thinking but downgrading is usually not a viable strategy and usually you don't spend money to downgrade. I don't understand why they remodeled Murrieta or Upland. My view is they did not really remodel any well positioned locations, they just remodeled random marginal locations for some reason. I don't think they remodeled the store in Roseville either which is (or was) a VERY high volume store for them, very large, and well positioned.
What is funny is up here, the only store with a center store stockroom was Sparks. Reno and Carson City both had the stockroom at the back. But they still had the tall gondolas in the middle, so there may as well have been a center store stockroom.
Speaking of Sparks, it is closing at the end of the week. They pulled the closing date forward and started to ship merchandise out of there this week (merchandise they just received a couple weeks ago). Still a lot of fixtures left, the landlord will have fun clearing this out, or maybe whatever furniture store they fill the space with will just keep the fixtures up since this landlord seems to like to fill dead spaces with furniture stores as evidenced by the dead Office Max and dead Shoe Pavilion. They got lucky to fill the dead Old Navy with a Five Below after it was empty for a decade. To buy their ceiling high gondolas, you have to give them proof of insurance.