When we talked about the impending doom of the future as kids, I have to say, this wasn’t the apocalyptic wasteland I was expecting.
2017 looks to be a banner year for the department store implosion that is now known as the “Retail Apocalypse,” or “Retailpocalypse,” if you like running words together. This most recent descent into decay began in 2016, but honestly, I don’t think it has ever really stopped since the”Great Recession.”
Admittedly, there are few surprises, if you to look down the list of the Altman-Z score’s hall of shame. I have mentioned before my observations of the once-prolific K-Mart brand: at the start of the Millennium, there were over two dozen stores along the Wasatch Front here in Utah. Now, there are two. This is in a 150-mile metropolitan stretch, home to almost 3 million people. Its parent company Sears actually now ahead, with four department stores left — only one of them still attached to a mall. I don’t expect to see them survive the decade. This includes their flagship “Sears Grand” store — which visiting today feels like trespassing. I’m no Youtuber or videographer, but I might have to give that a shot and document that surreal experience. While I have fond memories of both chains, I don’t know that I’ll miss them now. They have been shells of their former selves for so long that I have more memories now of closeout sales and collapsing buildings than I do of their glory days.
Recently I have had to watch Toys R Us lose two locations close to home. While nowhere near as dramatic, we’ll now have gone from six to three locations in the same amount of time. While there’s always the hope that this kind of streamlining will let the others survive, it’s hard to feel too terribly optimistic about having a better closure rate than K-Mart.
With this chain entering the spiral, though, I have some genuine emotions and regret. There’s very few stores that have given me as many memories as these have: lots of birthdays, report card cash, and hundreds if not thousands of toy hunts, many going back to before I could drive.
And of course, this calls to mind really the first major blow to us in the 21st century toy collecting world: the closure of KB Toys.
Supposedly, the final stores shuttered in 2009, but I don’t think I’ve been to one anywhere close to home in at least 15 years. It’s easy to see now that KB was really the canary in the coal mine, the warning sign that every mall in North America should have heard, but ignored, and are now paying the price. Again, something I have talked about before, but all those memories of the obscure finds, the sales ending in “3’s,” and just of being in the mall in general, are firmly implanted in my mind.
This obviously extends far beyond the world of just toy stores and malls. Just across the street from the already-closed Toys R Us, a Shopko joined it mere weeks later. Like K-Mart, not someplace I had a major attachment to, but I don’t think we’ll see many Shopkos by 2018.
And somewhat coincidentally, I drove past the “headstone” of another retail giant on the way home: the historical ZCMI facade in downtown Salt Lake City. ZCMI merged out of existence in the early 2000s, taking one of the greatest toy departments in history with it. The facade is now the entrance to Macy’s — and now that one too is headed to oblivion. This might be troubling for downtown, considering that Macy’s is a major anchor for a very expensive (and pretty useless) outdoor mall, which took the place of a more conventional and viable mall last decade. Macy’s will take a century of it’s own history with it, and to that end, the final chapter of what is often recognized as the “First Department Store,” as that ZCMI facade will adorn an empty space.
But it’s easy to join the chorus talking about the end of retail or the end of collecting as we know it or whatever the tagline is. It’s also easy to armchair quarterback and list off things that are causing this. Let’s keep it more simple: These “dinosaur” chains that we’re watching decline really are only doing so because they ignored the primary rule of business — complacency is death. Other chains are realizing the shift in the market, and they’ll live. Think of how different the world would look today is the execs at Sears and JC Penney hadn’t scoffed at the idea of moving their catalog market online 20 years ago. But you have to remember, they didn’t NEED that emerging market in 1998. So they maintained the status quo, and if you had been a market analyst that year, you would have applauded the decision. Trying to stay ahead of the curve comes with plenty of it’s own risks, for sure, and plenty pressure to stay the course — the old “normalcy bias” that makes us as individuals really bad at noticing incremental danger. There’s lots of social, political, even ethnic and geographical factors that come into play as well, but for me, that’s the big one.
All that said, though, I still hold out hope because as long as there’s things to spend, there will be things to spend it on. And for every dozen franchises that don’t make it, there’s always a couple that defy the odds. I snapped a quick pic while I was in the mall of one of my old standbys — local chain Hammond Toys. They’ve been here as long as I have, and here we are, in a mall in 2017, and they’re still kicking — in an old Suncoast location, no less. And that KB facade in the previous picture? It’s the new location for an arcade. That’s as positive a note to end on as I can think of.
