Shopping Malls are dying before our eyes

Once the Coronavirus lockdowns finally end, things will start to go back to normal. But it's looking like many malls will never recover.

A number of department stores have gone into bankruptcy reorganization recently: Neiman Marcus, JC Penney, J Crew and Saks Fifth Ave at least. And of course, Sears and KMart have been slowly dying for years. Now, this:

Lord & Taylor Plans To Liquidate, 'Going Out Of Business' Sales Expected As Soon As Stores Reopen

Those big department stores have traditionally been the "anchors" that drive traffic into malls. Without them, I dare say most malls will soon be gone.

To be sure, most of these stores have been going downhill for some time now, and malls with them. But the COVID quarantines are likely going to be the final nail in the coffin for them.

They financed and priced themselves out of business. The internet was the final nail in the coffin. So while it's true that Al Gore was partially responsible for approving the funding and pushing the creation of the 'net, he's also partially responsible for all of these malls closing now too. Gotta give credit where credit is due.

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

To be sure, most of these stores have been going downhill for some time now, and malls with them. But the COVID quarantines are likely going to be the final nail in the coffin for them.

Not just malls but plenty of family mom and pop operations are also casualties as well.

I locked the doors to my retail shop and gave it to my loyal employees; LLC, inventory, display, everything. I don't know it they will open it back up.

It took me 7 years to build that store up into a profitable enterprise; It only took a month to destroy it.

Thank God for my Union gig!!!

Went by the local one yesterday and they have big cement blocks blocking the driveways. Apparently people drove in one entrance through the mall to the jewelry store smashed into it jumped out grabbed a bunch of stuff and drove a couple of blocks away and got in another vehicle and never were seen again.
Never heard it on the news either.

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

At my local mall, there were FOUR freaking Sunglass Huts in the same mall. Those days are over.

Our retail shops open Friday thank god! Ironically, I need sunglasses.

Bars and restaurants to follow Monday. Finally some good news!

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

They were already starting to go downhill as today's kids were the main attendants. Most of the stores are geared towards adults and they don't want to go shopping where all the kids are hanging out. At least that's what has been happening here. First it was two malls in Shreveport, then across the river in Bossier City, the mall began getting crowded with unsupervised teens and it turned a lot of adults away. It might be different in other cities, I don't know. I stopped going because I don't care to see teens running through the mall chasing each other and screaming.

originally posted by: mikell
Never heard it on the news either.

They don't want to encourage copycats. If you know what you're doing, right now might be an easy time to get away with that sort of thing.

It's moving away from the mall model as these were more geared toward serving suburbs for shopping needs. It's moving more toward how the community I currently live in is. Townhouses, apartments, etc. all surrounding a walk-able "downtown" style area. Think small town feel, different businesses, restaurants, stores, etc. Less big chains and more one off/mom and pop style boutiques, don't need the big chains when you can order on Amazon or other retailers via the internet.

Fashion based stores are in trouble since with the internet you don't need to have actual floorspace to sell your wares and the ever increasing speed of fast fashion means stuff has to be cheap to shift as it'll be old in a month and not of interest.

Over here in the UK intu are about 5 billion in debt and its investors are starting to get very edgy and thus funding to keep going is getting tight.

a reply to: Hypntick

People still need to try on clothes. Nothing more frustrating buying something on the web, waiting (now a freaking week with Amazon) for it to arrive — then it being the wrong size. Now you’ve got to send it back. Start from the beginning.

I’ve been wondering about people trying on clothes. Will they allow it?

Also, a lot of places aren’t taking returns due to the virus.

So here we are faced with the possibility of not being able to try on clothes. Subsequently, not being able to return them.

COVID just sped up the already inevitable in this regard. The only way traditional shopping will survive is if the government starts clamping down on Amazon. That might actually happen, too. You force Amazon customers to pay fair market shipping prices to the USPS instead of being subsidized by the tax payer, add online sales tax and the impact of the foreign manufacturing tariffs, and just maybe Amazon starts to see sales going back to local brick and mortar shops.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan

Once the Coronavirus lockdowns finally end, things will start to go back to normal.

Doubt it - far more probable is a rolling series of 'lockdowns' and total corporate 'privatisation' of food production.

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

Well,... back to the moms and paps stores...that ain't a bad thing..or is it?

Sad to hear that people are losing their livelihoods at this time.

But shopping malls?
They're just churches for consumerism.

Farmers markets, traders villages, just a plot of land where people can sell their goods, those aren't going away.

When it comes to malls and churches, those institutions don't hold up as well in today's era.

You don't need a church to talk to God.
You don't need a mall to buy and sell goods.

My brother got furloughed from his job at Macy's.

He hated his job, corporate dress up set to the soundtrack of pre selected pop charts.

Does nothing for the soul to work at a mall but you work at a farmers market, it's more free form.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
COVID just sped up the already inevitable in this regard. The only way traditional shopping will survive is if the government starts clamping down on Amazon. That might actually happen, too. You force Amazon customers to pay fair market shipping prices to the USPS instead of being subsidized by the tax payer, add online sales tax and the impact of the foreign manufacturing tariffs, and just maybe Amazon starts to see sales going back to local brick and mortar shops.

I don't think so. Amazon already has you paying sales tax on their stuff, not sure about 3rd party vendors who sell on the Amazon platform.

If USPS raises prices they will just deliver it themselves. My guess is over the next 5 years or less they will start to deliver all of their own items, except maybe in the most rural areas.

Tariffs hit all of their competitors equaly so that wont hurt them at all.

The only thing that could slow Amazon down is if the government made them split off AWS and/or the advertising part of their business, because those are high margin businesses.

Malls are interesting. We have several here that are like ghost towns, but we also have one that is always so busy you can barely find a parking spot and another brand new outdoor one that seems to do well. The ones that do well are in more affluent areas. I think what killed the malls is that a lot of people have a lot less disposable income than they used to.

a reply to: KKLOCO

Our retail shops open Friday thank god! Ironically, I need sunglasses.

Bars and restaurants to follow Monday. Finally some good news!

Well thank goodness you don't live in Washington state. We don;t get bars and restaurants until June.

originally posted by: KKLOCO
a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

At my local mall, there were FOUR freaking Sunglass Huts in the same mall. Those days are over.

Our retail shops open Friday thank god! Ironically, I need sunglasses.

Bars and restaurants to follow Monday. Finally some good news!

Mall of America by chance?

Place has 4 of those, 3 sock stores, and at least 2 mirror maze's

originally posted by: zatara
a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

Well,... back to the moms and paps stores...that ain't a bad thing..or is it?

Those are dying too..

Shopping malls have been dying for at least the past 20 years. It is a confluence of factors all leading to their demise.

People's shopping habits have changed.

Personally, I don't like going to shopping malls because I simply don't buy a lot of crap anymore. When I do shop, I usually focus on quality goods and most of the store I prefer are not in typical suburban malls.

a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

Far more damaging to the retail sector and all of it's chain of job's and supply is actually the growing disparity between cost and wages, as the runaway unregulated economic's that began in the Reagan/Thatcher Era have reached well beyond critical mass with the theft of our job's to Asian cheap labour - I shall call it theft but it was a simple result of removing tariff's on imports from those nations - ostensibly under the pretense it was to help those nations AND to our own corporation's when in fact it was merely corporations looting our economy's for there own profit margin and allowing them to run amok.

The result of allowing Corporations to rule the world is economic's based on short term profit margin's, prime minister and presidents' whom do not know there head from there arse ruling the show and the bleed of our wealth to a tiny minority of ultra elite wealthy and to supposedly cheap labor hot spot's around the world but mostly to China.

The result of the Reagan/Thatcher years has been in real world term's falling wages for over thirty years now, houses that formerly were affordable to most people in a job are now out of reach for most employed workers especially those that are the backbone of the tiny fraction of our industry's that remain.

And it was not like economists of the time were not warning of this because they were only to then be called commies or radical socialists by the lying, deceiving and utterly wretched right wing propaganda machine, we asked our governments to ensure that our job's would be secure, they then allowed those job's to move out of our nation and only the elite received any protection from those we had voted in.

Wages fell for more than the past third of a century in real world term's never keeping up with inflation, some good's did become cheaper but at what cost and these were only luxury's while real world good's we actually need for our people got slowly and then rapidly more and more expensive.

Supply and demand collapsed in the sense of the word that while there is still demand there is no longer the buying power in the hand's of the people that do MOST of the buying in the retail sector.

Any future historian whom looks back, ignored the propaganda and see's the truth will wander how we were so dumb as to allow ourselves to be bamboozled by crook's and bend politicians' into this damned economic dead end, only radical reform's, bringing our job's home, smaller trading block's based around resources and shared economic's that are not open to the job exploitation market because that is an arterial bleed to our economy's etc will ever fix this problem - and it will take time to mend no quick solutions, it took over 30 years to trash what took over 200 years to build up, it will take at least 30 years to try to get back to a level footing while our government's and there corporate master's have given the Chinese a spring board to leap ahead of us in that time - and they shall and all because of the rat that followed the cheese.