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Sears/Kmart

Started by Tuxedo Mark, September 12, 2016, 12:50:04 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Jabroniville

Update: Sears has shut down all of its stores in Canada. That was fast- they'd closed down "select stores" in Canada earlier in the year, and have just decided to close up shop right before Christmas! Every store is a madhouse, and it's proving to be a disaster for Canadian malls, because most of them had JUST figured out what they're doing with all their abandoned Target locations! One of the malls it town had just renovated their old Target to have different store-space (converting a department store into a hallways with stores in it), and the West Edmonton Mall store is only NOW about to be filled with a few different things.

People are thinking the malls are gonna have to allow gyms to move in in order to survive, now.

Tuxedo Mark

Quote from: Jabroniville on November 03, 2017, 08:41:40 AM
Update: Sears has shut down all of its stores in Canada. That was fast- they'd closed down "select stores" in Canada earlier in the year, and have just decided to close up shop right before Christmas! Every store is a madhouse, and it's proving to be a disaster for Canadian malls, because most of them had JUST figured out what they're doing with all their abandoned Target locations! One of the malls it town had just renovated their old Target to have different store-space (converting a department store into a hallways with stores in it), and the West Edmonton Mall store is only NOW about to be filled with a few different things.

People are thinking the malls are gonna have to allow gyms to move in in order to survive, now.

I think malls are just gonna die out, period. They're such an outdated concept. The mall in my county has seen all four of its anchor stores close (including, yes, Sears and the Kmart that I used to work at) and only one take its place. If it wasn't for the movie theater, it'd probably be in much worse shape. There was even mold in the old JC Penney location, and it had spread throughout the mall, because various employees had complained of illness.

Eddie Lampert, the billionare hedge fund manager that orchestrated the merger of Sears and Kmart over a decade ago and now serves as its CEO (because no one else wanted the job), loaned the company $200,000,000 from one of his other companies in order to get it through the holiday shopping season. That loan comes due in April. Aaaaaand...they've already burned through it:

http://host.madison.com/business/investment/markets-and-stocks/how-much-cash-does-sears-have-left/article_4fb820a8-9bda-5559-a06b-fc27e2c550b5.html

Here's a new list of store closings:

http://www.syracuse.com/business-news/index.ssf/2017/11/sears_kmart_stores_closing_list_locations.html
BV-kiss-small
Riverdale Reviewed
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Mr.Lodge

I'll be surprised if they remain in business come springtime 2018.

DeCarlo Rules

Quote from: Jabroniville on November 03, 2017, 08:41:40 AM
People are thinking the malls are gonna have to allow gyms to move in in order to survive, now.

Hmmm. I guess it brings people into the mall on a daily basis, but then again I'd think that after you work out you'd be too tired to shop.

Jabroniville

#94
Malls in Canada are a different situation: http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/better-design-and-atmosphere-why-canadian-malls-are-thriving-while-american-malls-struggle


The weather here prevents a lot of "outdoor shopping center" things. Though a lot of malls are learning that their "anchors" are unnecessary, and are looking into putting odd things in those locations- doctors' offices, gyms, etc. These places provide rent money, even if there's no "crossover" between one thing and the other Most of the malls in town are undergoing MAJOR renovations, too- they're spending money to look better and be more modern.

Also, Online Shopping is proving to be riskier and riskier for a lot of people, and could eventually peak (never mind that Amazon barely even makes money, if at all).

Personally, I'd hate to see malls disappear entirely- as archaic as some aspects can be (business owners HATE the enforced opening & closing times, as they have to pay staff to do nothing for hours on weekends), they're a much better "destination" than most shopping centers tend to be.

Tuxedo Mark

Quote from: Jabroniville on November 09, 2017, 09:35:56 AM
they have to pay staff to do nothing for hours on weekends

Huh?! Explain this, please.
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Riverdale Reviewed
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Jabroniville

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on November 09, 2017, 10:55:53 AM
Quote from: Jabroniville on November 09, 2017, 09:35:56 AM
they have to pay staff to do nothing for hours on weekends

Huh?! Explain this, please.
It's simple:

Malls enforce the hours that businesses have to stay open.

Certain times of the day are infamously slow in malls, such as weekends after 6pm or so, some holidays, early mornings, etc. When I worked in a mall, Saturday after six was just DEAD- you only get business during the day.

Therefore, a business that has to stay open from 9 to 9 every single day has to pay staff to fill those twelve hours, even if a bunch of those hours aren't busy at all- the employees are thus drawn really thin for the times when it IS busy, and the stores basically blow money, because they're paying someone $/hour to sit around while no sales are made. My mom still works in a mall, and says there are days when you could roll a bowling ball down the halls and hit nobody. Yet every place is open.

I mean, yay, it's more hours for people who might need it, but it's a waste. Many business owners I know refuse to move in to malls directly because of this practice- paying staff for times when nobody's shopping is dumb.

Tuxedo Mark

Quote from: Jabroniville on November 10, 2017, 07:51:03 AM
Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on November 09, 2017, 10:55:53 AM
Quote from: Jabroniville on November 09, 2017, 09:35:56 AM
they have to pay staff to do nothing for hours on weekends

Huh?! Explain this, please.
It's simple:

Malls enforce the hours that businesses have to stay open.

Certain times of the day are infamously slow in malls, such as weekends after 6pm or so, some holidays, early mornings, etc. When I worked in a mall, Saturday after six was just DEAD- you only get business during the day.

Therefore, a business that has to stay open from 9 to 9 every single day has to pay staff to fill those twelve hours, even if a bunch of those hours aren't busy at all- the employees are thus drawn really thin for the times when it IS busy, and the stores basically blow money, because they're paying someone $/hour to sit around while no sales are made. My mom still works in a mall, and says there are days when you could roll a bowling ball down the halls and hit nobody. Yet every place is open.

I mean, yay, it's more hours for people who might need it, but it's a waste. Many business owners I know refuse to move in to malls directly because of this practice- paying staff for times when nobody's shopping is dumb.

Maybe it's different in Canada. Here, at a mall around an hour from my house, the food court has a Chick-fil-A, which refuses to open on Sundays. Any time that my mom and I visit that mall on a Sunday, that restaurant is closed, but everything else is open. That leads me to believe individual businesses can set their own hours.

Heck, now that I think about it, the Kmart that I used to work at (which is now closed) went through hour changes at one point, and I've seen other businesses in the mall post hours of operation signs.
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Riverdale Reviewed
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Every episode of "Riverdale", "The New Archies", and "Archie's Weird Mysteries" reviewed.
My digital wish list
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Jabroniville

I can't speak for all of Canada, but every mall I know of has hours it insists stores stay open. Department stores and restaurants are often open later, but every place has to be open until the mall is closed- this mystified me until I went to a mall with a lot of stores that'd shut down, and I realized that if stores closed whenever they wanted, then the mall would visually appear to be closing down or failing :).

The only places around here that are allowed to close earlier are the travel agent shops and pharmacies- I assume it's because those people are trained professionals (like, more than us cashiers :)) and can thus dictate their hours.


It makes the "outdoor shopping center" look more attractive to business owners, even if "walk-in traffic" is diminished.

I really hope malls don't fail, however. Shopping centers are lame places to visit compared to malls, the food is scattered everywhere instead of in one place, it's often freezing out, and anyone with kids will tell you it's REALLY inconvenient to have to walk from place to place with children (especially if they're in strollers). Malls are a god-send to people with kids.

Captain Jetpack

The only Kmart--indeed, the only shopping of note near my workplace, will close in January.


No place to get stuff if I need it, except the drugstores.
Also, no place to buy Archie Digests.
:( :tickedoff:
Pie is my favorite Vitamin.

DeCarlo Rules

That's a bummer. I remember going into a K-mart once and specifically asking a store clerk if they carried Archie digests, and the answer was "No", although that was a couple of years ago. I do remember seeing them about a year later in Walmart, but lately when I've been in there... once again, no Archie digests. Come to think of it, it's been a while since I've looked at Barnes & Noble, which was the only other place I knew of that I could reliably find them (other than special-ordering through my LCS) so who knows if B&N even carries them now. It would explain a lot.

Vegan Jughead

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on November 13, 2017, 10:44:38 AM
That's a bummer. I remember going into a K-mart once and specifically asking a store clerk if they carried Archie digests, and the answer was "No", although that was a couple of years ago. I do remember seeing them about a year later in Walmart, but lately when I've been in there... once again, no Archie digests. Come to think of it, it's been a while since I've looked at Barnes & Noble, which was the only other place I knew of that I could reliably find them (other than special-ordering through my LCS) so who knows if B&N even carries them now. It would explain a lot.


Barnes and Noble does still carry all of the digests.  From what I can tell, though, at the one near my house, no one looks at them or buys them.

Cosmo

Only see the digests here at the front checkouts at grocery stores like Foodland and Safeway.

ASS-P

#103
...The Sears at the Capitola Mall in Santa Cruz County is in decent shape, actually! The S-K thing was discussed on another (non-comics) board of mine. Although an outside of the building " Sears " sign was missing color in one of its As, when I went inside, the Capitola Sears was decent'looking, tidy & well-stocked - Not the run-down ghost town I was anticipating! (Someone at that other board works there.)


The mall itself isn't super crowded, I suppose - their food court consisted of three stands! The had a " pay a fee to play video games on a big screen " place, and a comicsgames store, with Magic tables set up in the back - I don't think I'd seen a comics shop in a mall since the boom comics shop years ended in a crash in 1994 or so - Frankly, though I like them, I thought that malls tended to snobbiness about " teenager-attracting businesses " like comics and vg places. Perhaps they can't be so snobbish anymore? ???

ASS-P

...I really have to say that, though Donald Trump unquestionably won, a popular-vote loss of over 2,750,000 million to his closest competitor is hardly a " landslide - And he insists ~ with absolutely no backing whatsoever ~ that that popular vote margin for his opponent was 100% improper votes, while producing no backing for that...and still encouraging " Lock her up! " chants at those rallies he keeps throwing! :knuppel2:  In 2012, when, at one point on election night, it looked as if Obama might win a 2nd term with an Electoral College win but a popular vote loss (This turned out not to be the case ~ Obama won both popular and Electoral in 2012, as he had in 2008.)...Trump sent out a tweet that arguably called for a violent uprising against an Obama victory! :tickedoff: :crazy2:

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