The store closing panacea

There has been a strong and growing narrative that the single smartest thing a struggling retailer can do is to close stores and, in some cases, a lot of them. I first touched on this nearly three years ago in my post “Shrinking to prosperity: The store closing delusion.”

There is no question that, in aggregate, the United States has too much retail space. There is no question that, in concept, the growth of e-commerce can allow an omni-channel retailer to serve some trade areas more profitably without a store and some trade areas with a smaller box. The key is to understand “some” and that starts with understanding why a given brand is under-performing in the first place. The other key is to understand the role that brick & mortar locations play in driving e-commerce–and vice versa.

In most cases, as recent events are bearing out more and more, store closings make an already irrelevant retailer less relevant. And frequently much less profitable as well.

Nearly 90% of traditional retail is still done in physical stores. In five years it will still be about 85%. The math is not that complicated.

Make it harder to get to a store OR make returns in a store OR order online and pick up in a store OR go to a store to research potential purchases OR learn about the brand, etc. and a retailer is almost certain to lose way more business (and margin dollars) to a competitor’s physical store in the vacated trade area than the brand “rationalizing” its store count will ever be able to make up through its website. This is why JC Penney, Home Depot and Lowes should write Eddie Lampert thank you notes pretty much every day.

Moreover, the symbiotic nature of digital and physical channels should not be ignored, yet often is. Several retailers–Sears is perhaps the best example–made the assumption that by investing in digital at the expense of physical stores they could more profitability serve their customer base over the long-term. As it turns out (and as more retailers are learning), e-commerce is often less profitable at the margin than brick & mortar operations and that when you close stores you actually make it more difficult for your e-commerce business to thrive. Oops.

Any retailer in trouble should absolutely analyze whether closing and/or “right-sizing” stores will be accretive to cash-flow. But that analysis MUST include the impact on long-term competitiveness and digital channel sales in the affected store’s trade area. Thinking you are helping when in fact you are merely initiating a downward spiral is a pretty big mistake to make.

Any analyst pushing for store closings and footprint down-sizing should be mindful that it is almost never the case that a struggling retailer’s ills are because they have too many stores or that the stores they have are fundamentally too large. Rather, it is because their brand relevance is not big enough for the channels, both physical and digital, that they have. Be careful what you wish for.

Show me a retail brand that is remarkable and relevant enough to command the share of attention that drives share of market and I’m virtually certain their executives are not spending a second on down-sizing. In fact, most are opening physical stores (e.g Nordstrom, Warby Parker, Amazon, TJX) and, in many cases, a bunch of them.

Show me a retail brand that is consumed with store closings and expense reduction and there is a pretty good chance they are a dead brand walking.

Thanks to those who have encouraged me along my path as I took a break from writing this blog. During my sabbatical I started a new blog on waking up to a life of love, purpose and passion at any age, which can be found at http://www.IGotHereAsFastAsICould.blog.