Driving a massive year for store closures were factors both dramatic and mundane. Retail bankruptcy liquidations ticked up, adding thousands to the year’s count, while other retailers quietly tinkered with their footprints or pared them under pressure of sales declines. At the end of the year it’s clear that retail is still over-stored and in the midst of a correction.
As Coresight analysts pointed out in a Dec. 13 report emailed to Retail Dive, more stores had closed by the 15th week of 2019 this year — spring, in other words — than in all of 2018. The wave of shutterings early in the year were driven largely by bankruptcy liquidations. Take Payless, which filed for its second Chapter 11 in less than two years in February. The footwear retailer was the biggest retail liquidation ever by store count, and represents nearly a quarter of Coresight’s total closure count.
