U.S. store closings are surpassing openings for the first time in two years, a new study Coresight Research shows. That turnaround stems from a recent surge of bankruptcy filings by struggling retailers.
More specifically, year to date, retailers have announced store closures totaling 4548, outpacing the 4426 announced openings for the same period and translating into 122 net store closings. The data marks a shift from the previous two years’ totals, when openings edged closings.
One of the reasons closings are now outpacing debuts is because furniture and home goods seller Big Lots, based in Columbus, Ohio, has significantly increased the number of locations it plans to shut, by 258, John Harmon, Managing Director of Technology research at Coresight told CoStar News. “Until two weeks ago, the lines [of closings and openings] were just tracking each other as expected,” he said.
In addition to Big Lots, other retailers shuttering locations in recent weeks has include Conn’s HomePlus, Badcock’s Home Furniture & More, LL Flooring Holdings, Buca di Beppo, Rubio’s and World of Beer. (The 94 LL Flooring closings are too recent to be included in Coresight’s report.)
But it’s not all doom and gloom.
“It’s not, in my opinion, a resumption of the retail apocalypse that we saw in 2018, 2019, 2020 where we were seeing so many stores closed,” Brandon Svec, national director of U.S. retail analytics for CoStar Group, told CoStar News. “There are still a substantial number of tenants from a broad range of sectors looking for space. And the longer-term imbalance between the space needed in retail and the space that we have, I don’t think has shifted.”
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Click here for more from the CoreSight study.
