1000 Family Dollar stores to close
As part of its portfolio optimization, initially announced late last year, the company will close 600 of its Family Dollar stores in the first half of 2024. An additional 370 Family Dollar stores and 30 Dollar Tree stores will close over the next several years once their leases expire, the company said in its fourth-quarter earnings report.
One would think, with inflation, that stores of this budget type would be prospering. But the problem with Family Dollar appears to be “unexpected costs from a recall of various over-the-counter drugs and medical devices in nearly two dozen states last fall.”
I sometimes shop in Dollar Tree stores; I’m not so familiar with Family Dollar, but I assume it’s similar. These types of stores are good for very basic supplies that don’t need to be fancy and whose prices can add up quickly in other stores.
To get an idea of the scope of the closings, there are 8,359 Family Dollar stores in the US right now, so the closings will affect about one-eighth of the total. There are 8415 Dollar Trees, and with only thirty of those closing, that line will remain largely the same.
I happen to have gone to my local mall yesterday for the first time in a very long time. It’s a bit ghost-townish, with perhaps a third of the storefronts empty. I well remember its opening about forty years ago (!). It was a huge event, and the place was always crowded for many decades. In recent years it was already fading, but COVID lockdowns killed it – or at least very much weakened it. Some original stores remain, but most of the businesses that are open are different ones than before.
The number of patrons was small yesterday; my footsteps echoed on the tile. But there was a set-up for kids to have photos taken with the Easter bunny, although I saw neither bunny nor children when I was there in the early evening.
My wife and I walked in our local mall yesterday. Also built about 40 years ago. It is scheduled for the wrecking ball this autumn.
Local malls are disappearing in favor of stores that are connected but not under the same roof (if you understand what I am trying to say).
An optimistic hope I have is that people start consciously building new, thriving areas to live in some of the old, small towns that are dying. Property can be had for a song. There are often old town squares with good architecture for artisan store fronts.
If you are working remotely why pay a fortune to live in a big city or suburb when you can buy property in a small town for a fraction of the cost and start building a new community with similarly minded, eager people? This is mainly for younger people. Many older people will be content to live out their lives where they are, even if their area is not thriving like it once was. But if one is young, or middle-aged, why ride out the next several decades in a declining area when one can create a new area on the bones and infrastructure of a formerly quaint small town with a low cost of living?
Two new Dollar General stores opened in our town of pop. 25,000, in addition to the existing Dollar Tree stores. It won’t be long until they’re forced to rename them Two Dollar stores.
SHIREHOME:
I believe you mean that strip malls are doing better than indoor malls.
Shirehome. and Neo,
What Shirehome is referring to are not strip malls but large expanses of shopping all interconnected by their own street system. The one here has every type of store from small speciality shops to Lowes, with various eateries mixed in. It’s booming.
SH may remember in Lakewood, CO a wonderful mall call Villa Italia. Was torn down and replaced by just what I described.
No, not so far as I know. Cannot claim long experience with these stores, but used one in a small northwoods burg, and occassionally for bopping into a suburban location to scoop up 20 tubes of toothpaste at a crack.
Now ignoring shrink-flation and marginal price boosting, the difference is that Family Dollar long ago started charging say 5,6, 10 bucks for detergent or whatever, sold more useless frippery type crap, and just was a more pathetic disorganized run down version of the other.
Now, buying toothpaste in bulk downstate, or paper towels and tinned German kippers in the north, may not make me an expert. But I can definitely say that Family Dollar deserves the trash can. Might as well shop for convenience purchases at a 7-11, or your local pharmacy chain.
And I am not recommending that you do that.
DNW:
I meant “familiar” as in ” I’m not so familiar with Family Dollar … ”
I just fixed it, thanks.
The problem with this is that in tiny little towns, a Family Dollar opened up which heavily contributed to what little local retail remained, folding up shop. Now, the Family Dollar will close, leaving the town with nothing.
Drone delivery from amazon will be all that is needed once 15 minute cities are firmly established…
And now that the House has passed a bill that will give Biden wide powers to censor/close down any online entity he declares to be a direct threat to democracy… only the mass media outlets will remain. Banning TikTok is just the beginning.
physicsguy, are you aware of this novel that a Conn College philosophy professor recently published?Book Review: Bright College Years by Andrew Pessin. He has also written Nevergreen, a satire on campus cancel culture. (Sounds like a takeoff on Evergreen College in Washington state.)
Sounds like you and he were kindred spirits.
I think it is probable that the other half of the corporate lineup will move into the vacuum.
The problem with Family Dollar per se was its shambolic business practices which were so bad that Dollar Tree which bought them could not restore the company to usefulness.
Dollar Tree, the remaining part of the business, at least made a stab at actually being a dollar or thereabouts, store.
I admit I have no knowledge whatsoever of Dollar General, and the linked article so far as I read, did not cover that corporation.
A dollar or not, the issue is small amounts for lower prices for people who can’t front the money for the giant economy size. Or who don’t need half a pallet of corn flakes.
For a single person, eight ounces of salad dressing go a long way.
There was a story some years ago about Lever Brothers going to individual usage packaging even for the developed world. So, instead of twenty-four ounces of shampoo, you buy two or three half-ounce envelopes and make them last. That fit the developing world.
The same applies to the dollar-store market.
It takes money to go to SuperWalmart and load up your SUV with two weeks’ supplies. Even though the unit or per-use price is lower.
In Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance wrote of a mall which had been converted to a senior walking track, though it still had a few stores. 🙂
One of the local malls was like that in its last few years, then they tore it down to build one of the open air malls described above, to fair success.
Dollar Tree is a bit different from Family Dollar.
Dollar Tree, for many years, had a policy of “everything is a dollar”. If something was clearly too cheap to pay a dollar for, you just got “more” of it. In the last couple years, they had to soften that thanks to inflation — “Thank you Joe!” — and it is now $1.25 for everything.
Family Dollar is much more the standard “five and dime” model from yesteryear. Everything is cheap, and often low quality, but prices can range from under a buck to 20-30 bucks for items.
Family Dollar expanded quite a bit in the last 5-10 years, especially in rural areas, so that’s probably going to hurt some smaller places, as they will have to drive to larger population zones for things.
As to malls, well, they were a “parent approved” place to hang out in for tweens and teens for a long long time. This faded with social media, I think, as the groups stopped actually meeting each other to socialize as much.
The growth of the internet for sales purposes has also hurt them, as many of the shops are pretty overpriced and/or a serious niche market. Plus, as a result of that pricing, people may do the obvious, and find their size in something they like, then hunt for an online store with better prices.
There’s also been a much greater push towards the strip mall and the similar model with “pods” of locations in a huge parking area. The latter has become the more common “upscale” model for stores.
From what I understand, a lot of mall spaces have been partitioned into doctor and medical spaces — not necessarily the whole space, but a good chunk of it.
This latter is especially common as the classic “anchor” stores — Burdines/Macy’s, Sears, etc., have fallen by the wayside with no replacement, leaving large spaces empty, which also hurts the mall attendance, as they are called “anchor” stores for a reason.
I recall the local mall in my area — in 1980 it was one long strip with a Belk’s at one end and a JC Penney at the other. They added three more legs to make a square and opened a Dillard’s as a third anchor. Then they extended it a bit off one corner to make space for the area Sears to move from its prior space in an older, smaller mall (since largely torn down) to the “big” mall. Then they extended it one last time to add a fifth anchor, a Burdines (large Florida chain, bought out by Macys during the big anchor contraction). The Sears is obviously gone, as is the Macy’s. There’s been talk about doing the offices thing with that entire segment of the mall. I can’t say I’ve been in it in the last year or two, so not sure what the current state is, though I do know the JCP, Belk’s, and Dillards are still there.
Now, as I understand it, the Mall was originally going to be built in one part of the town, on land owned by a powerful local family. There was some kind of fast bait-and-switch skulduggery (or so I have heard) which put it in a very different location well away from that land.
Supposedly, that family was majorly PO’d, and set out to ruin the mall, by building up an alternative retail space on their land over time (>40y, so yeah, long term effort). The have largely succeeded in many ways, with all the real major new retail space (Sams, Walmart, Lowes, Whole Foods, etc.) in the city going onto that land originally for the “Mall” — they’ve developed the area into both large-type “strip” malls (mostly very large stores, not lots of small ones and a couple large units) as well as some of that upscale single-store-in-a-huge-parking-lot style. They’ve gotten nailed a couple times in recent years as The Office Mart (aka Office Depot) closed, and now the Best Buy is also closing. So they’ll have some empty space for a bit as long as our current administration is anti-American.
}}} It takes money to go to SuperWalmart and load up your SUV with two weeks’ supplies. Even though the unit or per-use price is lower.
The biggest complaint I have with Wal-Mart these days is that, due to Covid, they contracted away from the 24/7 model, and now it doesn’t matter when you go in, the lines at the @#$#$@% checkout are ridiculously not worth the wait for what you save. It’s easier, almost always, to just buy off the internet.
P.S., I will note one thing — it seems as though, in areas where they have the “market only” walmart “foods” markets, the walmart milk prices are about half what they are in general (e.g., $2 a gallon rather than $4+) — they seem to use the milk as a loss-leader. This is (so far as I have noted in work-related travels) ONLY in those areas where they have the market-only locations. Half gallons are similarly reduced