The Incredible Shrinking Megastore: Retailers Think Outside the Big Box

[brooklynite]

from http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/09/15/the-incredible-shrinking-megastore-retailers-think-outside-the-big-box/">Streetsblog:

They lord over empty parking lots in Hazard, Kentucky; Twinsburg, Ohio; and Lewiston, Washington like the ruins of a lost civilization. Vacant Walmart stores are slowly decomposing in more and more American towns these days. More than 100 of them have been memorialized as part of the group Flickr pool known smugly as “They Sold for Less.”

...snip...

Now, as the commercial real estate industry regroups, evidence is mounting that Walmart and other mega-retailers will take a much different form than they have in the past. The new American shopping experience, according to many industry observers, will be less “suburban big-box” and more “urban destination.”

..snip...

Enter the “Walmart Express.”

...snip...

Walmart plans to open 15 to 20 of the small stores — about one-tenth the size of a “Supercenter” — by the end of the year, mostly throughout the southeast but also including three in Chicago. By 2012, they plan to open as many as 350 a year, part of the mega-retailer’s strategy to regain its dominance over dollar retailers.

Imagine -- competing for market share with "Dollar Stores". How the mighty have fallen.

[Juche]

1. Dollar tree, family dollar and dollar general are all outcompeting walmart in this economy

Although the items aren't always cheaper in my experience.

[Warpy]

8. There was a derelict Walmart in my area

when they wanted a superstore and built across the street. The building was divided and snapped up by Big Lots and The Dollar Store. This is a poor area, so I see people with full carts of processed food at Big Lots, especially, stocking up there before they fill in the gaps at Wally's, the gaps being what little meat or produce they are getting these days.

This is a pattern that started getting established in early 2007, about the time all the disastrous government policies were putting a heavy squeeze on people who were seeing their paychecks shrink while the inflation the government was pretending didn't happen grew by leaps and bounds.

It's really obvious at Xmas. The Big Lots lot is jammed. Wally's lot is not.

[tularetom]

2. High end and low end retailers are prospering

Those who catered to the middle and working classes are not.

What does that tell you?

[leftyladyfrommo]

3. I hate those huge stores.

Too big and it takes so long to just walk around in one.

I go to the smaller stores whenever I can.

[Broderick]

5. Hop on one of their motorized chairs

and let the others frown at ya and say so what.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Yes, Wal-Mart opened 3 Express stores in NW Arkansas in May. One, in a town of less than 3000,

has already caused the local grocery store to close.

[Coyote_Bandit]

6. You're referring to the store in Gentry, right?

To be fair, that local grocery store was already struggling before the Wal-Mart Express opened and had changed ownership at least twice in the past three years.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Well, now it's gone.

[Coyote_Bandit]

10. It would have been gone even without the Wal-Mart Express

The opening of the Wal-Mart Express was just the final nail in a coffin that was mostly complete already.

The store had changed ownership at least twice during the past couple of years and had closed several times during that period. The folks I know who lived in the immediate area of that store and shopped there regularly had already started looking for other places to shop before the Wal-Mart Express opened there. That trend was established at least two years ago. Prices were high. Selection was limited. And there were issues with freshness and food quality.

The area is rural with a culture very different from that in Bella Vista, Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, and Fayeteville. A number of folks in that area stock canned items from the Allen Canning Company outlet store in Siloam Springs, grow their own fresh veggies, have their own beef and poultry butchered and dressed and get their breads, cereals and pastries from the Little Debbie outlet store. Somebody that can and will do that can significanty reduce their food and grocery expenditures.

While it is certainly true that Wal-Mart has devastated many small town businesses that is not what happened here.

[LeftinOH]

7. Even worse- when a new megastore opens up, they seldom utilize the vacant

megastore (and it's gigantic parking lot) thats sitting across the street or right next door. What a horrible waste of land.

[The Genealogist]

11. Walmart is planning on adding two or three new "neighborhood markets"

or whatever they call those things. I guess we will see how many more local merchants Walmart forces out of business. I'm sick of it.