Bluemercury

[babs]

With today's announcement that Macy's will open 30 more Bluemercury locations, it made me think that perhaps Bluemercury would have been better off on their own. With Ulta and Sephora growing much faster and having many more locations, has the ownership of Bluemercury held back their potential?

[storewanderer]

With today's announcement that Macy's will open 30 more Bluemercury locations, it made me think that perhaps Bluemercury would have been better off on their own. With Ulta and Sephora growing much faster and having many more locations, has the ownership of Bluemercury held back their potential?

It is a lot cheaper to open a Bluemercury... and the sector is growing...

It would probably have more stores under different ownership. Maybe they should spin it off.

I must have missed the announcement about small format Macys expansion today. Was there any such announcement?

I also question if the 30 new Bluemercury units will materialize.

[buckguy]

Different price range than Sephora or Ulta. The usual places for these are lifestyle centers, the surviving high end malls, urban neighborhoods, or inner ring suburban downtowns. It shouldn't be difficult to find 30 of those locations. Kiehl's (one of the lines they sell) closed a lot of stores during COVID and some of those locations (still vacant) would make sense for them.

With today's announcement that Macy's will open 30 more Bluemercury locations, it made me think that perhaps Bluemercury would have been better off on their own. With Ulta and Sephora growing much faster and having many more locations, has the ownership of Bluemercury held back their potential?

It is a lot cheaper to open a Bluemercury... and the sector is growing...

It would probably have more stores under different ownership. Maybe they should spin it off.

I must have missed the announcement about small format Macys expansion today. Was there any such announcement?

I also question if the 30 new Bluemercury units will materialize.

[storewanderer]

Different price range than Sephora or Ulta. The usual places for these are lifestyle centers, the surviving high end malls, urban neighborhoods, or inner ring suburban downtowns. It shouldn't be difficult to find 30 of those locations. Kiehl's (one of the lines they sell) closed a lot of stores during COVID and some of those locations (still vacant) would make sense for them.

With today's announcement that Macy's will open 30 more Bluemercury locations, it made me think that perhaps Bluemercury would have been better off on their own. With Ulta and Sephora growing much faster and having many more locations, has the ownership of Bluemercury held back their potential?

It is a lot cheaper to open a Bluemercury... and the sector is growing...

It would probably have more stores under different ownership. Maybe they should spin it off.

I must have missed the announcement about small format Macys expansion today. Was there any such announcement?

I also question if the 30 new Bluemercury units will materialize.

And Sephora and Ulta are already in the type of locations you describe...

I think this is a good way to look like they're opening a quantity of new stores but the biggest quantity will be these smaller stores.

I guess they decided Bluemercury will get them a better ROI than additional small format Macys at this time.

[ClownLoach]

Different price range than Sephora or Ulta. The usual places for these are lifestyle centers, the surviving high end malls, urban neighborhoods, or inner ring suburban downtowns. It shouldn't be difficult to find 30 of those locations. Kiehl's (one of the lines they sell) closed a lot of stores during COVID and some of those locations (still vacant) would make sense for them.

It is a lot cheaper to open a Bluemercury... and the sector is growing...

It would probably have more stores under different ownership. Maybe they should spin it off.

I must have missed the announcement about small format Macys expansion today. Was there any such announcement?

I also question if the 30 new Bluemercury units will materialize.

And Sephora and Ulta are already in the type of locations you describe...

I think this is a good way to look like they're opening a quantity of new stores but the biggest quantity will be these smaller stores.

I guess they decided Bluemercury will get them a better ROI than additional small format Macys at this time.

They said that Bluemercury was the most successful offering the company currently has, and they'll open 30 more of them. They also indicated they're opening more small format, I believe the short term was 21 Bloomingdales and 9 more small format Macy's. Where I think Bluemercury is smart is that it's smaller than Ulta and Sephora so overhead is lower, and they can better control the environment inside. Ulta and Sephora are clearly having shrink problems as their too-large stores are easy for the shoplifters to quickly clear racks into reusable bags stealing several thousand dollars per bag. Recently a woman was arrested in San Diego County for an Ulta theft ring and was responsible for $8 Million in losses which shows you what open shelves and tiny packages can do. I don't think the tiny but well staffed Bluemercury environment allows for this kind of loss as it's a commission sales environment like Macy's and has vendor reps. Way too many employees for the mass shoplifters to be effective so they'd rather go loot a Ulta or Sephora instead (or even a Target). Ulta did recently announce they were going to downsize all new stores to a smaller format and I am sure they are doing it to reduce theft losses by tightening up the store layout so that they can see everything and make it much more uncomfortable for thieves who can easily hide behind an abundance of fixtures today.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcsan ... 2/%3famp=1

The difference as I read it was that over time they'll close 150 more large Macy's buildings, which I suspect still includes some of the ones on the prior "neighborhood stores" list that haven't closed yet. I don't think they made it to their previous closure figure. But then they imply they are opening more small format, more Bloomingdales (didn't indicate these would be small format Bloomies so assuming they are large format and probably will all be Macy's conversions), and more Bluemercury - all in the shorter term. Still sounds to me like opening more stores than closing at any given point in time. Also seems to be an unspoken statement that small format Macy's is more successful than small format "Bloomies" as I think they would have very specifically announced more of that format if they wanted to expand it. They did not explicitly say any of the new Bloomingdales would be the "Bloomies" small store so I assume none will be. I also wonder if any of the recently closed Nordstrom buildings will be acquired by Bloomingdales.

It is clear that under this CEO the Bloomingdales division has greatly outperformed Macy's, but it's more important to also recognize that Nordstrom has had a terrible decade. Bloomingdales has eaten their lunch, before they were closing stores not opening more. That is a sign of good things to come with this CEO now fixing all of Macy's Inc. with his best practices for turning around Bloomingdales. The only question mark in my mind is small format and it's success, but the fact that they are finally going to invest in cleaning up or removing their most stale and worn out stores is a huge win in my eyes and something that was only happening at the Bloomingdales side of the company previously.

The only way I see this going wrong is that they're obviously going to close older large stores, and they probably own most of those. The old stores being closed are of declining value so it's good to reinvest that money in new stores even if the return on the old is minimal. The problem is that we can expect all the new stores are going to be leased, which increases the burden on them to be profitable even if they're small format. Especially small format as the rents tend to go down per square foot as buildings get larger except in the most urban areas like Manhattan. So if these new small formats are not a hit, which they aren't to me anyway, then they will accelerate the death of the company instead of improve its fortunes. But then the alternative is doing nothing and allowing the changing and dying mall industry to determine their future as they passively react... Or letting themselves lose control of their assets and be looted by the glorified thieves that call themselves activist investors. I think they're taking the right road.

[buckguy]

Different price range than Sephora or Ulta. The usual places for these are lifestyle centers, the surviving high end malls, urban neighborhoods, or inner ring suburban downtowns. It shouldn't be difficult to find 30 of those locations. Kiehl's (one of the lines they sell) closed a lot of stores during COVID and some of those locations (still vacant) would make sense for them.

It is a lot cheaper to open a Bluemercury... and the sector is growing...

It would probably have more stores under different ownership. Maybe they should spin it off.

I must have missed the announcement about small format Macys expansion today. Was there any such announcement?

I also question if the 30 new Bluemercury units will materialize.

And Sephora and Ulta are already in the type of locations you describe...

I think this is a good way to look like they're opening a quantity of new stores but the biggest quantity will be these smaller stores.

I guess they decided Bluemercury will get them a better ROI than additional small format Macys at this time.

Ulta is mostly in mid-market shopping areas and tend toward big box centers. Sephora has gone into urban locations and lifestyle centers but don't have BlueMercury's price points or name brand merch.

[buckguy]

Different price range than Sephora or Ulta. The usual places for these are lifestyle centers, the surviving high end malls, urban neighborhoods, or inner ring suburban downtowns. It shouldn't be difficult to find 30 of those locations. Kiehl's (one of the lines they sell) closed a lot of stores during COVID and some of those locations (still vacant) would make sense for them.

And Sephora and Ulta are already in the type of locations you describe...

I think this is a good way to look like they're opening a quantity of new stores but the biggest quantity will be these smaller stores.

I guess they decided Bluemercury will get them a better ROI than additional small format Macys at this time.

They said that Bluemercury was the most successful offering the company currently has, and they'll open 30 more of them. They also indicated they're opening more small format, I believe the short term was 21 Bloomingdales and 9 more small format Macy's. Where I think Bluemercury is smart is that it's smaller than Ulta and Sephora so overhead is lower, and they can better control the environment inside. Ulta and Sephora are clearly having shrink problems as their too-large stores are easy for the shoplifters to quickly clear racks into reusable bags stealing several thousand dollars per bag. Recently a woman was arrested in San Diego County for an Ulta theft ring and was responsible for $8 Million in losses which shows you what open shelves and tiny packages can do. I don't think the tiny but well staffed Bluemercury environment allows for this kind of loss as it's a commission sales environment like Macy's and has vendor reps. Way too many employees for the mass shoplifters to be effective so they'd rather go loot a Ulta or Sephora instead (or even a Target). Ulta did recently announce they were going to downsize all new stores to a smaller format and I am sure they are doing it to reduce theft losses by tightening up the store layout so that they can see everything and make it much more uncomfortable for thieves who can easily hide behind an abundance of fixtures today.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcsan ... 2/%3famp=1

The difference as I read it was that over time they'll close 150 more large Macy's buildings, which I suspect still includes some of the ones on the prior "neighborhood stores" list that haven't closed yet. I don't think they made it to their previous closure figure. But then they imply they are opening more small format, more Bloomingdales (didn't indicate these would be small format Bloomies so assuming they are large format and probably will all be Macy's conversions), and more Bluemercury - all in the shorter term. Still sounds to me like opening more stores than closing at any given point in time. Also seems to be an unspoken statement that small format Macy's is more successful than small format "Bloomies" as I think they would have very specifically announced more of that format if they wanted to expand it. They did not explicitly say any of the new Bloomingdales would be the "Bloomies" small store so I assume none will be. I also wonder if any of the recently closed Nordstrom buildings will be acquired by Bloomingdales.

It is clear that under this CEO the Bloomingdales division has greatly outperformed Macy's, but it's more important to also recognize that Nordstrom has had a terrible decade. Bloomingdales has eaten their lunch, before they were closing stores not opening more. That is a sign of good things to come with this CEO now fixing all of Macy's Inc. with his best practices for turning around Bloomingdales. The only question mark in my mind is small format and it's success, but the fact that they are finally going to invest in cleaning up or removing their most stale and worn out stores is a huge win in my eyes and something that was only happening at the Bloomingdales side of the company previously.

The only way I see this going wrong is that they're obviously going to close older large stores, and they probably own most of those. The old stores being closed are of declining value so it's good to reinvest that money in new stores even if the return on the old is minimal. The problem is that we can expect all the new stores are going to be leased, which increases the burden on them to be profitable even if they're small format. Especially small format as the rents tend to go down per square foot as buildings get larger except in the most urban areas like Manhattan. So if these new small formats are not a hit, which they aren't to me anyway, then they will accelerate the death of the company instead of improve its fortunes. But then the alternative is doing nothing and allowing the changing and dying mall industry to determine their future as they passively react... Or letting themselves lose control of their assets and be looted by the glorified thieves that call themselves activist investors. I think they're taking the right road.

Bloomingdale's has been downsizing their stores for a while--they're replacing Old Orchard near Chicago with a much smaller store. The Friendship Heights store in DC is half the size of the White Flint store it replaced and that opened more than 10 years ago. They seem to be cutting way back on furniture, in particular, which used to be one of the traditional department store areas where they hadn't made the cuts that other chains had done.

You're probably right that Macy's hasn't closed as many "neighborhood" stores as they seemed to announce, but they have closed the obvious ones---obviously dead/dying malls, very old stores that were too big for their market area (they inherited a bunch of these on the East and West Coasts), and small markets. Closing 150 stores means closing almost 1/3 of what's left and I wonder if they may exit entire medium to large metro area markets. Otherwise, they will need to find new ways to drive volume to one or few stores in these places. Dillard holds on its northern markets with few stores, but these are neglected stores with low volumes that they probably own--it's not a growth strategy. Macy's is not opening enormous numbers of small stores, so they seem cautious about this and whether they buy or lease these isn't going to have a big impact, overall, although leases may make it easier to end this experiment if it doesn't work.

[ClownLoach]

And Sephora and Ulta are already in the type of locations you describe...

I think this is a good way to look like they're opening a quantity of new stores but the biggest quantity will be these smaller stores.

I guess they decided Bluemercury will get them a better ROI than additional small format Macys at this time.

They said that Bluemercury was the most successful offering the company currently has, and they'll open 30 more of them. They also indicated they're opening more small format, I believe the short term was 21 Bloomingdales and 9 more small format Macy's. Where I think Bluemercury is smart is that it's smaller than Ulta and Sephora so overhead is lower, and they can better control the environment inside. Ulta and Sephora are clearly having shrink problems as their too-large stores are easy for the shoplifters to quickly clear racks into reusable bags stealing several thousand dollars per bag. Recently a woman was arrested in San Diego County for an Ulta theft ring and was responsible for $8 Million in losses which shows you what open shelves and tiny packages can do. I don't think the tiny but well staffed Bluemercury environment allows for this kind of loss as it's a commission sales environment like Macy's and has vendor reps. Way too many employees for the mass shoplifters to be effective so they'd rather go loot a Ulta or Sephora instead (or even a Target). Ulta did recently announce they were going to downsize all new stores to a smaller format and I am sure they are doing it to reduce theft losses by tightening up the store layout so that they can see everything and make it much more uncomfortable for thieves who can easily hide behind an abundance of fixtures today.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcsan ... 2/%3famp=1

The difference as I read it was that over time they'll close 150 more large Macy's buildings, which I suspect still includes some of the ones on the prior "neighborhood stores" list that haven't closed yet. I don't think they made it to their previous closure figure. But then they imply they are opening more small format, more Bloomingdales (didn't indicate these would be small format Bloomies so assuming they are large format and probably will all be Macy's conversions), and more Bluemercury - all in the shorter term. Still sounds to me like opening more stores than closing at any given point in time. Also seems to be an unspoken statement that small format Macy's is more successful than small format "Bloomies" as I think they would have very specifically announced more of that format if they wanted to expand it. They did not explicitly say any of the new Bloomingdales would be the "Bloomies" small store so I assume none will be. I also wonder if any of the recently closed Nordstrom buildings will be acquired by Bloomingdales.

It is clear that under this CEO the Bloomingdales division has greatly outperformed Macy's, but it's more important to also recognize that Nordstrom has had a terrible decade. Bloomingdales has eaten their lunch, before they were closing stores not opening more. That is a sign of good things to come with this CEO now fixing all of Macy's Inc. with his best practices for turning around Bloomingdales. The only question mark in my mind is small format and it's success, but the fact that they are finally going to invest in cleaning up or removing their most stale and worn out stores is a huge win in my eyes and something that was only happening at the Bloomingdales side of the company previously.

The only way I see this going wrong is that they're obviously going to close older large stores, and they probably own most of those. The old stores being closed are of declining value so it's good to reinvest that money in new stores even if the return on the old is minimal. The problem is that we can expect all the new stores are going to be leased, which increases the burden on them to be profitable even if they're small format. Especially small format as the rents tend to go down per square foot as buildings get larger except in the most urban areas like Manhattan. So if these new small formats are not a hit, which they aren't to me anyway, then they will accelerate the death of the company instead of improve its fortunes. But then the alternative is doing nothing and allowing the changing and dying mall industry to determine their future as they passively react... Or letting themselves lose control of their assets and be looted by the glorified thieves that call themselves activist investors. I think they're taking the right road.

Bloomingdale's has been downsizing their stores for a while--they're replacing Old Orchard near Chicago with a much smaller store. The Friendship Heights store in DC is half the size of the White Flint store it replaced and that opened more than 10 years ago. They seem to be cutting way back on furniture, in particular, which used to be one of the traditional department store areas where they hadn't made the cuts that other chains had done.

You're probably right that Macy's hasn't closed as many "neighborhood" stores as they seemed to announce, but they have closed the obvious ones---obviously dead/dying malls, very old stores that were too big for their market area (they inherited a bunch of these on the East and West Coasts), and small markets. Closing 150 stores means closing almost 1/3 of what's left and I wonder if they may exit entire medium to large metro area markets. Otherwise, they will need to find new ways to drive volume to one or few stores in these places. Dillard holds on its northern markets with few stores, but these are neglected stores with low volumes that they probably own--it's not a growth strategy. Macy's is not opening enormous numbers of small stores, so they seem cautious about this and whether they buy or lease these isn't going to have a big impact, overall, although leases may make it easier to end this experiment if it doesn't work.

Don't forget that they were quoted as having about 100 two store malls left, and they have been working on consolidating all of those to a single store except for the top performing locations (South Coast Plaza which technically is two separate buildings although they built a sky bridge connecting, if you count the home store it would be a 9 story flagship if all in a single building). So two thirds of these closures aren't leaving any market or even a mall, they're just combining the two stores into one where they probably were operating for years with spaced out, thinned assortments to just take up space. Before the inventory management was fixed these would have been stores where one entire floor was kitchenware but there would be hundreds of Keurig coffeemakers stacked out, Kitchenaid mixers, random blenders, air fryers and don't forget cheap pots and pans sets that the Manager had ordered just to fill all the empty space. Once they moved to inventory allocation based on sales history and moved eCommerce fulfillment to ship from store all this abundance of boxed stock disappeared overnight and left the stores looking anemic and empty. They were just trying to make one stores worth of inventory look like two stores worth. There will be zero customer impact when they consolidate, in fact I believe sales will go up as mentioned in other posts because Macy's will regain the convenience of everything under one roof, not two roofs at opposite ends of a shopping mall.

I'm going to throw out another wildcard... The Nordstrom family is under tremendous pressure as they have lost their way and the stores are underperforming. Yes, they've had some good quarters in the very recent short term but collectively the investors have lost most of their value in the past ten years. The debacle of entering and exiting Canada, where department stores still do relatively well along with Malls is another example of how they've fallen from their leadership position. This CEO has done well with Bloomingdales... At some point in time the investors are going to revolt at Nordstrom and demand a sale. I wonder if part of this new CEO plan is to be ready for that day and acquire Nordstrom.

[buckguy]

[quote=buckguy post_id=55741 time=<a href="tel:1709302325">1709302325</a> user_id=2908]
[quote=ClownLoach post_id=55703 time=<a href="tel:1709222178">1709222178</a> user_id=2864]
[quote=storewanderer post_id=55689 time=<a href="tel:1709194520">1709194520</a> user_id=56]


And Sephora and Ulta are already in the type of locations you describe...

I think this is a good way to look like they're opening a quantity of new stores but the biggest quantity will be these smaller stores.

I guess they decided Bluemercury will get them a better ROI than additional small format Macys at this time.

They said that Bluemercury was the most successful offering the company currently has, and they'll open 30 more of them. They also indicated they're opening more small format, I believe the short term was 21 Bloomingdales and 9 more small format Macy's. Where I think Bluemercury is smart is that it's smaller than Ulta and Sephora so overhead is lower, and they can better control the environment inside. Ulta and Sephora are clearly having shrink problems as their too-large stores are easy for the shoplifters to quickly clear racks into reusable bags stealing several thousand dollars per bag. Recently a woman was arrested in San Diego County for an Ulta theft ring and was responsible for $8 Million in losses which shows you what open shelves and tiny packages can do. I don't think the tiny but well staffed Bluemercury environment allows for this kind of loss as it's a commission sales environment like Macy's and has vendor reps. Way too many employees for the mass shoplifters to be effective so they'd rather go loot a Ulta or Sephora instead (or even a Target). Ulta did recently announce they were going to downsize all new stores to a smaller format and I am sure they are doing it to reduce theft losses by tightening up the store layout so that they can see everything and make it much more uncomfortable for thieves who can easily hide behind an abundance of fixtures today.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcsan ... 2/%3famp=1

The difference as I read it was that over time they'll close 150 more large Macy's buildings, which I suspect still includes some of the ones on the prior "neighborhood stores" list that haven't closed yet. I don't think they made it to their previous closure figure. But then they imply they are opening more small format, more Bloomingdales (didn't indicate these would be small format Bloomies so assuming they are large format and probably will all be Macy's conversions), and more Bluemercury - all in the shorter term. Still sounds to me like opening more stores than closing at any given point in time. Also seems to be an unspoken statement that small format Macy's is more successful than small format "Bloomies" as I think they would have very specifically announced more of that format if they wanted to expand it. They did not explicitly say any of the new Bloomingdales would be the "Bloomies" small store so I assume none will be. I also wonder if any of the recently closed Nordstrom buildings will be acquired by Bloomingdales.

It is clear that under this CEO the Bloomingdales division has greatly outperformed Macy's, but it's more important to also recognize that Nordstrom has had a terrible decade. Bloomingdales has eaten their lunch, before they were closing stores not opening more. That is a sign of good things to come with this CEO now fixing all of Macy's Inc. with his best practices for turning around Bloomingdales. The only question mark in my mind is small format and it's success, but the fact that they are finally going to invest in cleaning up or removing their most stale and worn out stores is a huge win in my eyes and something that was only happening at the Bloomingdales side of the company previously.

The only way I see this going wrong is that they're obviously going to close older large stores, and they probably own most of those. The old stores being closed are of declining value so it's good to reinvest that money in new stores even if the return on the old is minimal. The problem is that we can expect all the new stores are going to be leased, which increases the burden on them to be profitable even if they're small format. Especially small format as the rents tend to go down per square foot as buildings get larger except in the most urban areas like Manhattan. So if these new small formats are not a hit, which they aren't to me anyway, then they will accelerate the death of the company instead of improve its fortunes. But then the alternative is doing nothing and allowing the changing and dying mall industry to determine their future as they passively react... Or letting themselves lose control of their assets and be looted by the glorified thieves that call themselves activist investors. I think they're taking the right road.
[/quote]

Bloomingdale's has been downsizing their stores for a while--they're replacing Old Orchard near Chicago with a much smaller store. The Friendship Heights store in DC is half the size of the White Flint store it replaced and that opened more than 10 years ago. They seem to be cutting way back on furniture, in particular, which used to be one of the traditional department store areas where they hadn't made the cuts that other chains had done.

You're probably right that Macy's hasn't closed as many "neighborhood" stores as they seemed to announce, but they have closed the obvious ones---obviously dead/dying malls, very old stores that were too big for their market area (they inherited a bunch of these on the East and West Coasts), and small markets. Closing 150 stores means closing almost 1/3 of what's left and I wonder if they may exit entire medium to large metro area markets. Otherwise, they will need to find new ways to drive volume to one or few stores in these places. Dillard holds on its northern markets with few stores, but these are neglected stores with low volumes that they probably own--it's not a growth strategy. Macy's is not opening enormous numbers of small stores, so they seem cautious about this and whether they buy or lease these isn't going to have a big impact, overall, although leases may make it easier to end this experiment if it doesn't work.
[/quote]

Don't forget that they were quoted as having about 100 two store malls left, and they have been working on consolidating all of those to a single store except for the top performing locations (South Coast Plaza which technically is two separate buildings although they built a sky bridge connecting, if you count the home store it would be a 9 story flagship if all in a single building). So two thirds of these closures aren't leaving any market or even a mall, they're just combining the two stores into one where they probably were operating for years with spaced out, thinned assortments to just take up space. Before the inventory management was fixed these would have been stores where one entire floor was kitchenware but there would be hundreds of Keurig coffeemakers stacked out, Kitchenaid mixers, random blenders, air fryers and don't forget cheap pots and pans sets that the Manager had ordered just to fill all the empty space. Once they moved to inventory allocation based on sales history and moved eCommerce fulfillment to ship from store all this abundance of boxed stock disappeared overnight and left the stores looking anemic and empty. They were just trying to make one stores worth of inventory look like two stores worth. There will be zero customer impact when they consolidate, in fact I believe sales will go up as mentioned in other posts because Macy's will regain the convenience of everything under one roof, not two roofs at opposite ends of a shopping mall.

I'm going to throw out another wildcard... The Nordstrom family is under tremendous pressure as they have lost their way and the stores are underperforming. Yes, they've had some good quarters in the very recent short term but collectively the investors have lost most of their value in the past ten years. The debacle of entering and exiting Canada, where department stores still do relatively well along with Malls is another example of how they've fallen from their leadership position. This CEO has done well with Bloomingdales... At some point in time the investors are going to revolt at Nordstrom and demand a sale. I wonder if part of this new CEO plan is to be ready for that day and acquire Nordstrom.
[/quote]

I doubt that Macy’s has 100 mall locations with 2 stores at this point. I did some browsing and there is only 1 out of 12 locations in the DC area and the numbers are low or zero in other places I searched. They do have some stores that have been converted to Backstage clearance centers in malls that are due for redevelopment and likely closure candidates but they are few in number.

They have stores in malls that are irreversible looking decline: Monroeville near Pittsburgh, Great Northern near Cleveland, Security Square and Marley Station near Baltimore, and a bunch near Atlanta Gwinnett, Northlake, Southlake). The Baltimore locations are not too terribly far from healthier malls where they also have stores. Those seem like the kind of stores most likely to go next.

There are sizable places with very few stores: Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, for example and these are markets that once were dominated by their ancestor stores. These are markets where they need to decide whether to commit and, in some cases, figure out how to rebalance their locations. They somehow manage to have as many stores in the Youngstown area as they do in places with several times the population.