Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by veteran+ »

West Palm Beach in Florida is a case study in over saturating areas with retail concepts that fail.

Pre covid, pre recession, post recession, pre amazon, post amazon, et al. They just keep on building and closing "centers" in spite of what the area truly needs and in tandem to operating profitably.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by pseudo3d »

veteran+ wrote: February 26th, 2021, 6:10 am West Palm Beach in Florida is a case study in over saturating areas with retail concepts that fail.

Pre covid, pre recession, post recession, pre amazon, post amazon, et al. They just keep on building and closing "centers" in spite of what the area truly needs and in tandem to operating profitably.
There's no question that certain areas are over-retailed, especially in areas where traffic and population never panned out (Woodville Mall in Ohio, for instance) or has changed so dramatically in terms of demographics it no longer makes sense to have a middle-to-upper income shopping mall.

It is not, however, to excuse why we can't have 200k+ square foot department stores anymore.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by storewanderer »

pseudo3d wrote: February 26th, 2021, 11:27 pm It is not, however, to excuse why we can't have 200k+ square foot department stores anymore.
You'll have to ask the department stores why they couldn't figure out how to run their stores anymore in a way that kept them relevant. This is all on the department stores. Kind of felt like they just sort of tried to fail.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

200,000 square foot stores made sense when stores sold a large amount of hard lines but you just don't see that anymore in these types of stores. Like I said in another thread a while ago, all these places are now are big box clothing stores (and over priced ones at that.) Most of the retail clothing business today has went to stores like TJ Maxx, Marshall's, Burlington, etc. The prices are much better and the quality is just as good as the dept. stores (and actually much better relative to the price.) The days of multi-level dept. stores in malls are probably behind us for the most part. Honestly, if your name isn't Wal-Mart or Target you're probably not going to be able to make a big box store work anymore.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by pseudo3d »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: February 27th, 2021, 9:53 am 200,000 square foot stores made sense when stores sold a large amount of hard lines but you just don't see that anymore in these types of stores. Like I said in another thread a while ago, all these places are now are big box clothing stores (and over priced ones at that.) Most of the retail clothing business today has went to stores like TJ Maxx, Marshall's, Burlington, etc. The prices are much better and the quality is just as good as the dept. stores (and actually much better relative to the price.) The days of multi-level dept. stores in malls are probably behind us for the most part. Honestly, if your name isn't Wal-Mart or Target you're probably not going to be able to make a big box store work anymore.
Even soft lines aren't merchandised well. If a store is 70,000 square foot and I still can't find a decent polo shirt in my size, then that's on them, and better-run stores can, surprise, run larger stores. I bought some shorts at Dillard's about four years ago that feel great, the only problem is that the line seems to be of the "one and done" variety. (There's a certain podcast I sometimes listen to where the host ranted that once you find a comfortable pair of shorts at a store you will never be able to find them again when they inevitably wear out).

Meanwhile, stores like Costco and IKEA run massive stores and people flock to them.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by babs »

Let's stop calling them department stores when they only have apparel and a corner of housewares. Such a misleading term. Target and Walmart fit the definition of a department store.these days. And with Target now selling Levis at "department store" prices, I'm not sure Discount Store applies to the anymore either.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by Super S »

pseudo3d wrote: February 27th, 2021, 2:41 pm
TW-Upstate NY wrote: February 27th, 2021, 9:53 am 200,000 square foot stores made sense when stores sold a large amount of hard lines but you just don't see that anymore in these types of stores. Like I said in another thread a while ago, all these places are now are big box clothing stores (and over priced ones at that.) Most of the retail clothing business today has went to stores like TJ Maxx, Marshall's, Burlington, etc. The prices are much better and the quality is just as good as the dept. stores (and actually much better relative to the price.) The days of multi-level dept. stores in malls are probably behind us for the most part. Honestly, if your name isn't Wal-Mart or Target you're probably not going to be able to make a big box store work anymore.
Even soft lines aren't merchandised well. If a store is 70,000 square foot and I still can't find a decent polo shirt in my size, then that's on them, and better-run stores can, surprise, run larger stores. I bought some shorts at Dillard's about four years ago that feel great, the only problem is that the line seems to be of the "one and done" variety. (There's a certain podcast I sometimes listen to where the host ranted that once you find a comfortable pair of shorts at a store you will never be able to find them again when they inevitably wear out).

Meanwhile, stores like Costco and IKEA run massive stores and people flock to them.
Bingo.

I have been to JCPenney and Macy's stores approaching 200,000 square feet and have been surprised by how few clothing sizes they carry (no big & tall departments for instance) given the massive store sizes.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by cjd »

Department stores like JCPenney and Belk used to offer full hard lines in most of their stores back 40-50 years ago. I don't remember it still being a thing even in the 90s. They do have departments like that but the selection is small and probably not competitive with places like Walmart. JCPenney's return to selling appliances in their stores a few years ago was kind of a return to this but they didn't have the means to staff it properly to be competitive. Not that stores like Lowes or Home Depot have particularly knowledgable employees in those departments but they departments themselves are easily accessed and visible whereas at JCPenney they just were almost hidden away.

Yes, places like TJ Maxx, Ross Marshalls seem to be getting all the traffic these days, and yes they do have better prices and often a wider selection. The appearance and layout of course with just rows of racks, isn't as nice as being in a department store with fancy displays, etc, but it works okay. The service isn't as good either but then again there it doesn't take much to see what's available on the racks.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by Super S »

cjd wrote: February 27th, 2021, 6:52 pm Department stores like JCPenney and Belk used to offer full hard lines in most of their stores back 40-50 years ago. I don't remember it still being a thing even in the 90s. They do have departments like that but the selection is small and probably not competitive with places like Walmart. JCPenney's return to selling appliances in their stores a few years ago was kind of a return to this but they didn't have the means to staff it properly to be competitive. Not that stores like Lowes or Home Depot have particularly knowledgable employees in those departments but they departments themselves are easily accessed and visible whereas at JCPenney they just were almost hidden away.

Yes, JCPenney at one point was more like Sears and Montgomery Ward in their offerings, but discontinued most of their hard lines in the early 1980s. I think their transition to more hard lines started around the beginning of the "Funky P" era. A 200,000 square foot store can work with more variety, but without hard lines some of those huge old stores really don't need that much space.

We have touched on the many reasons elsewhere here why JCPenney's return to appliance sales failed. But they did have a good opportunity to capitalize on Sears' misfortunes and could have at least attempted to bring in a few more hard lines type items gradually. But I don't see that happening.
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Re: Dead/Dying Malls in Your Area and Predictions

Post by veteran+ »

None of these trends are appealing to me.........lol.

I guess I will have to go with bespoke clothes :cry:
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