January 28, 2019
by Daphne Sorenson
The decline of department stores continues to affect the retail industry, as Macy’s, Kohl’s, Nordstrom and JCPenney have announced that they will be closing more stores in early 2019. It’s part of a trend that is hitting fashion retail especially hard, since about half of the retailers that closed the largest number of stores in 2018 have fashion as their core business. Kohl’s will be shuttering all of its stores that are located in shopping malls, while almost all of the stores that Macy’s, Nordstom and JCPenney are closing are also located in shopping malls.
Many of the stores that are closing are not in economically depressed areas but are in areas with middle- or high-income levels, with the highest-income levels in places such as New York City’s Rego Park area; the San Francisco Bay Area’s Silicon Valley; West Los Angeles (near Beverly Hills); Redmond, Washington (a suburb of Seattle); and Fairfax County, Virginia. That’s probably because customers in these high-income areas are more likely to have the resources (credit cards with high credit lines) to do more online shopping than people with lower incomes. But that’s only part of the reason why these stores are closing. Based on customer review sites such as Yelp, these stores have been plagued for quite some time with complaints about bad customer service, declining appearance/cleanliness and unsatisfactory inventory.
According to Business Insider, these are the stores that will be closing in 2019:
Kohl’s
Kohl’s Rego Park at Rego Center in Rego Park, New York
Kohl’s Valley Stream at Green Acres Mall in South Valley Stream, New York
Kohl’s Lenexa in Lenexa, Kansas
Kohl’s Houma at Houma Crossing Mall in Bayou Cane, Louisiana
JCPenney
Three stores to be announced.
Macy’s
Macy’s at Casper Eastridge in Casper, Wyoming
Macy’s at Redmond Town Center in Redmond, Washington
Macy’s at Sunnyvale Town Center in Sunnyvale, California
Macy’s Furniture Gallery at Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles, California
Macy’s at Glendale Mall in Indianapolis, Indiana
Macy’s at Swansea Mall in Swansea, Massachusetts
Macy’s at Tysons Galleria in McLean, Virginia
Macy’s at Nanuet Mall in Nanuet, New York
Macy’s at Charleston Town Center in Charleston, West Virginia
Nordstrom
Nordstrom at The Mall at Wellington Green in Wellington, Florida
Nordstrom at MacArthur Center Mall in Norfolk, Northern Virginia
Nordstrom at Providence Place Mall in Providence, Rhode Island