Many retailers have become very selective when it comes to what stores keep the chain open. It seems that even successful chains occasionally close a place when a lease contract expires or even before businesses become bad enough.
Sometimes that is just a matter of changing populations. People may have moved, or their work no longer requires them to be in the office every day.
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That can mean that fewer people lead to a specific location of a store, which makes it less necessary or not even necessary. However, such closures are simply part of doing business.
When it becomes large enough as a chain, even when doing it well in general, there will be atypical values that do not work and should be closed. Those are more a sacrifice of the weak than a general sign of the company's health.
However, companies with difficulties have to make more difficult decisions. Chains like Macy's have not only closed stores that lose money, but also in equilibrium locations. That is an effort to conserve money and focus on the largest areas of opportunities.
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Other department stores of the national chain that has faced its own set of difficulties has been to frame its store closures such as a positive movement. In theory, that could be the case, since sometimes you simply have to amputate rotten limbs so that the entire tree survives.
Image and colon source; Shuttersock
Kohl's closed 27 locations on April 5
It is easier for a chain to close selected locations, while the company in general remains open than liquidating a complete company. That is because, well, there could be business sales sales. The parent company. This is because, although there could be sales from outside business, the parent company and the transfer of certain inventory to locations that will not close.
Kohl shared in January that he planned to close 27 retail stores and a compliance center. At that time, the company was careful to frame the movement as positive, and pointed out in the press release that operated more than 1,150 locations.
“While Kohl continues to believe in the health and strength of its profitable store base, these specific locations had a lower performance,” he shared.
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The financial director Jill Timm minimized the closures during the gain call of the fourth quarter of Kohl.
“I look at these 27 stores as hygiene, and that is something we should be doing all the time. We look at it annually. We look at the stores that have a lower performance, and we are closing them independently. There are no limitations on which we could close and what makes more sense,” he shared.
Kohl's can close more stores
Timm also made it clear that more stores can be closed in the future.
“I think that as we appear in the coming years, we have many defeated leases, which gives it the opportunity to check, if we relocate that store, it reduced the size of that store, closing that store,” he added.
Kohl's has also been testing a new and smaller store format that can make sense in some markets.
“We have a very productive prototype, particularly our main prototype of more than 80,000 that is very productive and very profitable,” said CEO Ashley Buchanan.
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He also thinks that the chain had some improvements to make in existing places.
“If you look inside the box, correct, how we assign the space between categories, products and adjacencies, I think we have lost a little discipline in that part, and there are many opportunities. I mean, only something simple that we have recently done before arriving here is realine casual pants next to the dress pants, and saw an increase, right? It is only the traditional way of the clients' stores and the piece of adjacentness,” he said.