The stock plunged 24% today to lowest since 1997, down 89% from peak, and has joined our Imploded Stocks.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Shares of department store Kohl’s [KSS] plunged 24% today to $9.19, the lowest price since August 1997. But that 24% plunge today is barely visible in a 10-year chart. The stock has collapsed by 89% from its all-time high in September 2018, and has been inducted into our pantheon of Imploded Stocks.
The beating that Kohl’s shares took today came after the company reported that total revenue in Q4 fell by 9.4% year-over-year, and by 7.3% for the whole year, the third year in a row of annual revenue declines, to $16.2 billion, a tad above the lockdown low in 2020, and beyond that the lowest in many years.
In the three years before 2020, annual revenues had stagnated at $20 billion. Since 2018, revenues have dropped by 20%. For the current fiscal year, the company today projected another revenue decline of 5-6%, which would bring the decline since 2018 to 25% (data via YCharts):
Net income in Q4 collapsed by 74% to just $48 million. Net income for the whole year collapsed by 66% to just $109 million. Compared to 2017 ($859 million), annual net income has collapsed by 87%.
And all these failing department stores, those that are still around, are blaming their customers, that they’re tapped out or whatever, obviously, not themselves for having failed to switch their business to ecommerce a decade ago, and not ecommerce, which has been eating their lunch for over 25 years.
Department stores are particularly targeted by ecommerce because you can buy anything online that department stores sell at their stores, but a lot more, the whole panoply of products, styles, sizes, and colors, not just a selection, and they bring it to your house, and often for less.
Since the peak in 2000, over those 24 years, department store sales have collapsed by 43%. There is no recovery for brick-and-mortar department stores. As Americans changed how they shop, the business model of brick-and-mortar department stores collapsed under the weight of ecommerce.
But ecommerce is booming, and consumers are holding up just fine: in Q4, while Kohl’s sales dropped 9.4% year-over-year, ecommerce sales jumped by 9.3% year-over-year.
Kohl’s replaced the CEO earlier this year, and the new guy, Ashley Buchanan, quickly announced additional store closings for 2025.
Today during the earnings call, Buchanan blamed his customers. He said that customers earning less than $50,000 a year are “pretty constrained from a discretionary standpoint,” and for those earning less than $100,000, “it’s also pretty challenging, and you see that very clearly in the numbers,” he said.
Which was funny, because ecommerce sales are booming, they’re up 9.3% year-over-year, and Kohl’s problem is that its customers are buying online from other retailers, such as Amazon, or Walmart, or Macy’s or Nordstrom, or any of the Chinese outfits that are now selling directly in the US.
Kohl’s new guy is blaming “constrained” customers when in fact they’re buying from the online competition, and Kohl’s is just losing them.
All surviving department stores have ecommerce sites, and online sales growth, if any, partially covers up the demise of their physical stores.
They all have been shutting physical stores for years, and that continues in 2025. Each time a store closes, the nearby stores get to pick up some of the left-over business from the closed store, softening the blow of ecommerce on the survivors, and the rest of that business from the closed store walks off to the internet.
Thousands of stores have closed since 2016, which is when I started calling this relentless process the Brick-and-Mortar Meltdown. Local department stores and regional department store chains are all gone by now. The national chains are down to just a handful, all of them troubled, including J.C. Penney, which was bought out of bankruptcy by the #1 and #2 largest mall landlords fearing for their malls, when the anchor stores close.
Walmart, which is not a department store but a general merchandise retailer, figured this out years ago and spent billions of dollars, including on acquisitions of now scuttled ecommerce retailers, to build a huge ecommerce business that is growing at 20-30% a year. In addition, it focused on groceries and became the largest grocer in the US, because Americans largely still like to buy groceries at the store, though that’s changing too. The rest of Walmart’s retail business is suffering from the brick-and-mortar meltdown too.
Buchanan had been one of the leaders at Walmart’s booming ecommerce business in 2019 and 2020 and knows what’s up: An effort to boost the ecommerce business and closing more brick-and-mortar stores – that’s the only long-term survival strategy there is for department stores.
But it’s a bitter pill to swallow for investors, so it’s better not to explain that to them. And it’s better to dish up some stuff about “constrained” consumers.
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Has there ever been a business that shrank itself to success? I’d hate to see these guys fail although I never shop there. Their pricing strategy is a total mystery.
Shrinking your way out of trouble is not easy. There is a long list of businesses that shrank their way into bankruptcy court.
Instead of blowing more cash on share buybacks, as it announced today, Kohl’s should invest every penny it can get into its ecommerce operations so it might have at least a viable business.
Getting ecommerce right isn’t always easy. I doubt if companies like Kohl can catch up on ecommerce now.
Perhaps best for them to buyback than re-invest the money in a dying business. But your point about missing the chance when they had one is valid.
I see several disconnects between what investors want and what will help the business long term. There is no dearth of Jack Welch’s in America who enrich shareholders while the business catching terminal illness.
Take a look at the Southwest vs activist investor fight right now. Eventually Southwest gives into pressures and removes the one thing that most of its loyal customers care about :)
Let us see how the corporate history of LUV unfolds from here.
my wife will be unhappy
it’s her retail therapy
I drop her off at say 1pm after lunch
she tells me to come back at 9pm(close)
Kohl’s gives her so many coupons/deals/20% off final price after 50% off, etc etc
besides she needs 50 pairs of shoes
——
I can think of many reasons why I would rather have her do that than …….
I wouldn’t write them off. Imho, the CEO missed a big trick here, instead of blaming his customers he could have blamed being undercut by direct sales from big bad China. This would lean into what .gov is doing/thinking.
Que the admin working towards a policy that bans direct sales and requires the existence of profit driven US based middlemen corps. This may not save them (execution, execution, execution) and would not necessarily result in lower prices for consumers, but less may not be more for society.
I was wondering at first if Kohl’s was run by private equity. PE is the 1/2 of the guaranteed death-nail for a business. But alas, it was the other 1/2 death-nail of share buyback stupidity. Thanks for the information.
I do think there’s some truth in what the CEO said between the 50k and 100k. The problem is for them, there’s way more truth in what you said.
The unconstrained consumer purchases $120k Cyber trucks.
It’s “death knell” not “death nail”.
I like death nail a LOT more. Totally nails it, so to speak. I’m going to steal it in the future. As in: “Inflation was QE’s death nail.”
Yes, ultimately, the only thing Kohl’s is is the “love” that its customers have for it. Customer loyalty is an asset. Macy’s is closing about 150 locations this year, but you can still find good products online at their site. I’ll never understand why Borders Books outsourced their ecommerce effort. If ecommerce is the future of retailing, then businesses have to specialize in ecommerce or shut down, which is what Borders eventually did.
Howdy Curiouscat. The Kohls pricing strategy might be or used to be Kohls Cash Rewards. I would sometimes have to listen to my wife and daughters in law talk about the Kohls Cash Incentives offered by mail, email….. I was trapped in a vehicle with them and had no place to hide……
Exactly Bubba, what Kohl’s needs is more women to go shopping in their stores! Give them CASH and a car!
“Their pricing strategy is a total mystery.”
Tend to agree with this, although I kinda sorta can make out their “plan”.
Basically, Kohl’s is way more expensive than Target/Walmart but markedly less pricey than say, Nordstrom. Think of an upscale JC Penney (although, also think about what happened to Penney).
Basically, Kohl’s is targeting for the upper mid-tier in terms of pricing.
But the mid tier has been eroding for a *long* time. Maybe 10-20% go upwards (Nordstrom, etc.) but everybody else goes down (Target, Amazon).
And Kohl’s has far too many physical locations for its strategy, given that its targeted price base is evaporating/migrating.
That’s interesting. I wonder how they’ve stayed in business so long. A decade ago there was a khols near me. I moved. The store was always empty. No customers, hard to find an employee. They were about the same price as a target or JC Penny, but there was always an outrageous sale — like 50-75% off.
As much as I would have like to buy something there, they never had anything I wanted. If I needed a dress shirt they would be on sale, but it was low quality junk. For me this is the main reason why I shop online. The stores rarely have anything I’d want.
So buy the dip then? Only took 10 years for this opportunity to arrive. Still to be fair to Kohl, at least in this pantheon of imploded stock it took way longer than Beyond Meat 93% fall from grace in 5 years..
Dude, that’s a never buy. Lol
Buy the dip in Costco instead. The last brick and mortar general. I mean dinosaur.
[Edit] I mean sell. Definetly sell.
Andy, are you saying sell Costco? Seems like they are knocking it out of the park with their stores. Always jam packed.
Costco is a cult stock. I bought Sept-Jan puts on Costco (right before they reported last earnings) for half the price I would pay for similar puts for SP500. I have some profit cushion now to sit on these. The next leg down should not spare any stocks.
Great data and article.
Consumer perspective:
I spend a fricken ton a year on crap I don’t want, need or particularly care for. So unbiased perspective on Kohls.
It’s cheap stuff and I’m like meh. Although the shipping experience is nice, with lots of parking and large stores. Feels like an old Macys lite. The kohls cash thing was fun to play with back in about 2012. I think maybe they do not stock enough brands that draw in a consumer who will spend $100-200 a trip. At Christmas I saw a bunch of older women returning a bunch of things. So, not much to buy and kind of expensive for the cheap crap they do have on hand.
👍
My wife used to love the 30% off coupons from Kohl’s. It took average prices and made them cheap. Now she gets 10% off coupons on wildly overpriced clothing. Found the Temu app and found out that you could buy the exact same low-quality clothing for 10% of Kohl’s price.
Sufferinsucatash … excellent comment! I agree 100%!!
The shopping experience at Kohl’s … is unpleasant at best.
Kohl out to show a target if store closings that will save the ship
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll look for a going-out-of-business sale. I need a new couch at a fraction of the cost.
Mr. Wolf – Retail is cratering everywhere. There is NO WAY that this is all due to e-commerce. I read that there is ONE thriving mall left in your lovely hometown of San Francisco. Women love to shop – and much of it is the browsing, the social aspect, the walking, the availability of multiple stores all in one place, including restaurants. But more than anything, they love to spend money on themselves. Teens also love malls and department stores. Sure, e-commerce takes some business away from brick ‘n mortar stores, but to blame the demise of brick and mortar stores on e-commerce is like saying ICE vehicle sales are dead due to EV sales taking over. There’s much more to the story.
Bobby M,
“Retail is cratering everywhere.”
Brick and mortar retail sales at indoor malls are dying — that’s been going on for years. Big indoor malls have been dying in large numbers, and they will vanish as malls, they have huge parking lots and easy-to-tear-down buildings that can be redeveloped into housing, etc. That’s already happening on a large scale, including in San Francisco. Ecommerce is booming. Grocery stores, auto dealers, and gas stations are doing OK. Restaurants have been growing their sales at a sharp rate. Strip malls anchored by grocery stores are doing well. Overall retail sales have been growing sharply.
So the first chart shows department store sales (same as in the article), the second shows total retail sales (not in the article), so you can see them together, both of them quarterly:
I have two teenage daughters bordering on adults.
Neither has ever expressed any interest in spending time at a mall. Not once. They find them to be curiosities of a bygone era where we occasionally go to see a movie. Their shopping is done on their phones or computers.
We wasted so much of our young lives at malls, not buying much, if anything. I wish I had discovered hiking earlier.
I used to stroll the malls for fun as a youth, too, but I never considered it a waste of time. The widely varied sensory experiences were still enjoyable for me at the time. Lots of bold, exciting craft & mime shows, etc.
Children of this bygone era certainly had no idea online retail would cannibalize the malls.
It’s a bit sad, actually, as the destruction of malls atomizes society even further away from central, informal gathering places.
Pretty much every year for the past 20 years I have bougth more and more stuff online (and less and less stuff at traditional retail outlets). I can’t think of a single person that won’t say the same thing (even my parents in their 90’s now buy almost everything but groceries online). In the apartment business for the last 20 years the number of packages left at apartment doors has been increasing every single year. I don’t see Kohl’s turning things around and I think we will lose a LOT more traditional retailers on the next decade. P.S. With more and more things getting locked up at traditional retailers more and more people are like me and don’t care if they have to pay more online since they don’t have a half an hour to wait around for someone to find the the employee who has the key to the spray paint cage at Home Depot or Walmart…
I prefer to buy stuff in brick and mortar stores especially shoes and clothing, but as Wolf pointed out online shopping continues to have more and more options and styles. However those of us who like fresh produce, breads and meat, we will never shop online for perishable goods. Furthermore, if your missing milk or some ingredients for a recipe, waiting for next day delivery isn’t an option. So grocery stores will never go away, but may shrink in size. I also think hardware stores like Lowes and Home Depot can’t be replaced by online shopping because projects can’t stop to wait for a box of screws or some part.
@Nicholas Rains I’m not a big “fashion” guy and buy most clothes and shoes to replace clothes and shoes that have worn out. Once I have something that fits I just buy the same size again (as easy as clicking buy it again on Amazon). We have a meal kit company that sends us a box with fresh food on ice once a week with three diners and we just go to the grocery store twice a month and make once a month trips to Costco and Trader Joes. Almost anyting that will fit in a Home Depot shopping bag is now cheaper on Amazon (even if you don’t have the Amazon card that gives you 5% cash back).
I won’t buy any home improvement stuff on Amazon anymore after three orders in a row where I received counterfeit electrical equipment. There is absolutely no point in upgrading to CAFCI breakers, for example, if you can’t be sure they’re going to work. Safety and security begin at the supply chain.
Nicholas Rains,
“those of us who like fresh produce, breads and meat, we will never shop online for perishable goods.”
We now buy vegetables at an online-only Asian-food store in the Bay Area. They’re local, they’re getting their stuff straight from the Central Valley, they deliver the next day mostly with their own staff drivers, it’s fresher than at the store, and they have lots of produce that stores don’t carry. And their stuff costs less.
We also buy frozen fish there because we can get fish that we cannot get at a store, a large variety of delicious fish that you will never find at a Safeway or Whole Foods. And it’s a good deal too.
We tried that store once and were hooked! That’s how it goes with lots of ecommerce stuff. You try it once and are hooked by what you can get, by the ease of it, by the price, by the convenience.
We’re now also buying lots of our bulk food online, such as different kinds of beans, rice (Japanese-style California-grown rice, Basmati rice, and jasmine rice), quinoa, etc. Save lots of money. And it’s good stuff.
We’re shifting more and more grocery purchases to ecommerce.
It’s possible in places like California where farm to table is convenient and companies must meet the same standards as farmer’s markets. However those who live in the sticks have few options. I moved to Angel Fire, NM from the Bay Area, I order bulk groceries from Sam’s Club with free shipping, but produce and meat is an issue. I drive 45 minutes to Taos to Albertsons once every week or two because our local grocery store’s produce is terrible. I’m not sure what life in Albuquerque or Santa Fe is like, but the feasibility of successful grocery e commerce is driven by market size, median income and availability of products.
This is still generally true NR, but it’s changing fast.
Better half works in a small but growing grocery store that stocks only the best organic produce, and that store is doing good because of the ”attention to detail” that predominates above all other factors.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the ecommerce for staples, etc., not only in re groceries, but also hardware, clothing, etc., etc., ”local” brick and mortar retailers who focus on personal service and quality will continue to do well, at least for the time it takes for all families to produce all their own produce.
Which, if the current level of education teaching ”what to think” instead of ”how to think” continues, might be a long long time.
WE can hope otherwise, eh
I can hardly get anything anymore at my local hardware store, though they provide great and friendly service. They loaded up on kitchen ware and other stuff. But if you want something small that you need to fix something, and that you bought there before, they no longer have it. Their great and friendly services will tell that they don’t stock it anymore. That has happened to me several times. Now I switched to buying this stuff online. By reducing their selection to cut their inventory costs, and by trying to go where the easy money is, these local stores are driving their customers to ecommerce one by one. This happens all around retail.
re: small hardware-store small-necessities situation. I periodically aid my genuinely-small village independent local garage/auto parts/hardware shop with stores management (probably because I’m a relict ‘speak parts’ counter guy, be they automotive or general hardware). A major challenge for this type of business, in lockstep with ecommerce over the last two decades, has been the consolidation and reduction of warehouse distribution firms (the traditional source for wholesale goods purchases for retail resale) who have figured out the increased profitability and lower HR-overheads of consumer-direct sales, and now often-seem to regard their brick-and-mortar customers only as a declining nuisance to service, i.e.: the small local retailer has fewer sources interested in their business, and those remaining sources, dealing with the public through their own ecommerce arms, offer naught but increasingly-thinner-to-vanished dealer margins. Very hard work to stock and make a living from a lot of the ‘small, but necessary’ things if you are a true independent, not backed by the (still declining) buying power of a franchise organization (no guarantees, True Value a poster child, here) or available independent business buying co-op…
Things are always in transition somewhere, in this Promised Land…
may we all find a better day.
Can local small online businesses win over control freak corporations? We can only hope.
Brant-nothing like discovering you’ve been struggling to cope with inventory price increases from WD’s who decided on the QT to become your direct e-commerce competitors…
may we all find a better day.
“online-only Asian-food store in the Bay Area”
Which one please?
Thanks!!!!
Google it?
Found it. Thanks again!!!
I cannot believe how many perfectly mobile neighbors I see getting groceries delivered (from crap stores, no less, when we have a Wegman’s just minutes away). My wife, who thankfully does our grocery shopping and even more thankfully uses that as the way to get her spending fix, would never put the choice in picking up to others (especially since they are likely getting rid of the oldest produce on the online customer).
Home Depot just rules (I am a shareholder), but they rule a little less since they carry less in stores since you can order it now. But their online service is fabulous.
Just bought a snowblower online ,36% off and delivered when promised was super easy .Even had to set up a account
I use instacart to buy non-perishable stuff from Walmart, and to buy fruit, vegetables, and meat from Sprouts. I have a 5% cash back card, but they charge a fee. It nets out costing about a dollar or two per order. Delivery is usually within a couple of hours. I use another service that delivers medications for free the next day, I hate Walgreens. Everything else I get from Amazon with a 5% cash back card. Generally Amazon is next day delivery, but some stuff is same day delivery. I do video appointments with my doctor. I never liked going to stores, so all this e-commerce and delivery is great. Saves a lot of wear and tear on my car, no transportation costs, and no more wasted time shopping. I’ve got getter things to do with my time,
I’ve got better things to do with my time. This site could use an edit option.
No! not going to happen. Even the site owner lives with his mistakes. The rest of us can, two….
…not to mention the results can occasionally be ones of great, if unintentional, humor!
may we all find a better hay…
Khols actually does ecommerce too. Buy online or buy online and store pickup. Ironically they have more selection of sizes, colors, etc. online than in stores.
But they’re hurting themselves. Website needs work. Shipping is only free on $50+ orders. Inventory management is poor. There’s a store one mile from my house, but frequently out of what I need. All seemingly fixable issues nobody has fixed.
Ah, Kohl’s—a once-prominent retailer now teetering on the precipice of obsolescence. Their recent 24% stock plunge, reaching lows unseen since 1997, is a testament to their failure to adapt to the digital age. While e-commerce flourishes with a 9.3% year-over-year growth, Kohl’s clings to its antiquated brick-and-mortar model, hemorrhaging customers to more agile online competitors. Blaming “constrained” consumers is a convenient deflection; the truth is, Kohl’s has been outmaneuvered in a game it refused to acknowledge.
MW: Roomba vacuum maker iRobot warns it may go bust, sending stock down 40%
MW: Eggs aren’t getting any cheaper. Prices were up a further 10% in February.
For the past six weeks or so, we’ve been buying eggs below $5. And we can now find them. Before we had trouble finding them, and those we did see were $8+, and I refused to buy at those prices because I hate getting ripped off.
But there are still not a lot of eggs on the shelves at our stores, and purchases are limited to 1 dozen per shopping trip. It will take a while to get over the effects of the avian flu.
Matt Stoller is running a good series on the vertically integrated egg oligopoly — the avian flu is only part of the story …
My wife has always bought slightly “fancy” eggs – the ones where they don’t treat the chickens so bad. Those have barely gone up in price, while cheap eggs are now about the same price as the fancy ones. She makes a good point that the poorly cared for chickens are more likely to suffer disease and die or otherwise not produce eggs.
I believe it’s actually the opposite.
The chickens that get ‘yard time’ outside of their barns are more likely to catch something from infected geese that hang out and crap in their pasture.
Prices are down on eggs now.
down back to same price as Trump’s first day in office.
Newsweek “Egg prices plummet”
If you can find them.
Seems to me that a good portion of what could be driving e-commerce sales is a constrained consumer.
Tighter budgets —> shopping more vigorously for better deals —> shopping online to see what’s available.
That’s funny how everything gets twisted around in this shop to fit some narrative 🤣
I figured the budget conscious consumer, driven to search for lower prices (particularly in an inflationary environment), switching more purchases to online in order to get those lower prices, was a pretty reasonable narrative. 😀
Sure, Kohl’s management may have failed here in a number of ways, but the idea that cash strapped customers are moving online for better deals it’s not a wild and crazy one.
I agree, and I don’t quite understand Wolf’s reaction. His third figure clearly shows how online sales are increasing. I guess the question is whether or not this is simply due to increasing wages or are the percentage of purchases from brick and mortar shops actually decreasing. Speaking for myself, we definitely purchase more groceries online these days.
There has been this stubborn denial about retail sales at malls. Look at the chart of department stores. 20 years of dropping sales!!! This has zero to do with income. This is a long-term structural change in how American shop! The entire industry has known for at least a decade. And people who deny that, and blame consumers’ not making enough money to go to a freaking store or whatever, are leftover goofballs spreading their dead narrative.
Lots of purchases online are made for convenience.
Lots of other ones are also made in a search for increased value.
In a place where talk of inflation and the increased cost of goods and services is so frequent, I’m (figuratively) scratching my head that the value part of the equation seems to be sneered at.
And I don’t recall making any statements suggesting that sales hadn’t moved online, I was merely commenting on one of the potential why’s for the change.
Even an old guy like me who was originally resistant to online shopping has been converted for lots of product categories ever since the pandemic basically forced us all to use it to one degree or another.
Recently I have found I can buy a lifetime supply of small things all at one go (think USB-C and USB-Lightning cables) ridiculously cheap from overseas sources, saving me constant trips and lots of money on vastly overpriced items that my family invariably loses or breaks.
Now any time I have to replace something that I use a high volume of over time (filters, bulbs, cables, etc), I look to see if I can source it this way instead.
It’s not just e-commerce that’s eating Kohls lunch, but also the all in a warehouse retailers that did figure out some e-commerce. I am thinking Walmart and Costco, which carry apparel and household goods.
My personal theory is that e-commerce is less a marvel of tech and more an advancement of the sears mail order catalogue system, with a better warehouse system and faster ship timing. Some retail space is probably needed for showrooming purposes for stuff that is higher in price and/or needs demos to close sales, but not nearly as much as in the past. I wouldn’t bet on category retail for the long run. Malls that can get a grocery store tenants might be survivors, although they may be too large to be ideal destinations.
Bingo.
See my comment below.
Lilian Vernon was one of the first with catalog sales. She used to send out these small catalogs and worked from her kitchen table. I visited the Virginia Beach warehouse of her’s back in the late 1980’s. Nice work, Lilian!
Wolf’s a pioneer.
Out there alone in no-man’s land?
No. I’d say it’s more of a being brave enough to tell the truth in an empire of lies kind of thing.
In most cases, people simply do not want to hear the truth.
Lone quinoa-eating Wolf.
MCB – looking forward at minimally-maintaining the executive crew of the spacecraft’s expectations, it’s food demands, like it’s energy ones, will be selected less by crew preference, and more by where found (…cue the late Harry Harrison…).
may we all find a better day.
Good information. E-commerce is not easy, especially if your shipping costs are not stable/predictable. right now there are some cheap shipping options out there. For example, people seem to be desperate enough to drive for firms such as grub-hub, but I don’t see how those models are going to last. Eventually, these folks will realize that they are losing money, not making any. Certainly not enough to meet the currents costs of living.
I remember reading that the US had WAY more trail sf per person than other countries.
My first Google hit was:
United States leads with 23.5 sf per person
Canada 16.8 sf per person
Australia 11.2 sf per person
UK has 4.6 sf per person
France 4.5 sf per person
Japan 4.4 sf per person
Even before online shopping I thought that we had more retail space (and retailers) that we needed in the US (I remember walking past a half dozen different shoe stores as a kid is a small retail street).
If you ever went into any of the European big-city department stores, such as Kaufhof (a big chain in Germany, filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and then again in 2023), or in the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, you will see just how cramped these places are. They’re even more horrible and exhausting to shop in than US department stores.
miss the old days of having a day of fun in shopping mall.
children nowadays don’t even know what a physical store looks like.
what we will have in the future is Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, Costco, and dollar stores. If this image is not depressing enough, think about how aggressive your women will be when there is no outlet to consume their rage.
This is likely just regional/seasonal, but I have to say I was really surprised by how many junior high and high school age kids there were at the shopping malls during the Christmas shopping season.
Really seemed like the social aspect of being out and about was is in full affect, but I don’t actually get out to the malls ften enough to have a broader sense of things.
I am sure the financials and statistics of store closures provide a much better indicator of shopping mall health overall, but I was still pretty darned surprised. And it was kinda nice just to see kids out being social, as they probably should be doing with more frequency…
None of those kids in the malls are buying anything except from the food court.
“I was really surprised by how many junior high and high school age kids there were at the shopping malls during the Christmas shopping season.”
Maybe it was a fieldtrip by a history class to a live museum about how Americans used to shop way back in the day. Like taking the kids to a pioneer museum that shows covered wagons, old guns, and a diorama of a campsite.
Now that you mention it, there were a surprising number of kids wearing cowboy hats, and the cacophony from boot heels on the floor echoed throughout the mall…
“Your women…”
God, dude, we just had another guy get his asshole torn on another article for saying something stupid.
I’d genuinely like to hear more comments from our women readers (if they’re not put off by this kind of BS).
(I realize you may have been kidding).
Took a quick glance at Kohl’s stock after the drop. Declining revenues. Huge debt. I predict BK or heavily dilutive restructuring within two years. Too risky for me.
I did make 100% on the stock in 2020 during the pandemic, but that’s when there was time for a turnaround.
I wonder how this will impact Target. The Kohl’s in my area is situated across the parking from a Target.
The failing of Kohl’s and JCP isn’t entirely because of ecommerce. Their couponing business model just doesn’t work anymore. And, besides, both department stores have had serviceable ecommerce platforms for over a decade. They just very rarely could compete on price or fulfilment.
Stores like TJX, Nordstrom, ANF, and Target are doing just fine and still rely primarily on their brick and mortar operations.
Nordstrom is not doing “just fine.” They have been closing stores for years. Their revenues declined by 5% in 2024 and were flat with 2020. Their stock plunged by 80% before they were taken private by the Nordstrom family at a big premium in December 2024. But they do have a big ecommerce business, and that is doing “just fine.”
Everybody hates Target now. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe they’ll get a new customer base, and it’ll be “the people of Target” instead of “Walmart”.
In Traverse City , Michigan Big Lots, Joanne Fabrics and Macy’s are all in close-out/store closing mode. Bed Bath and Beyond closed last year. Looks as though Kohl’s will be next. These are all sad occurrences for the businesses, but especially their employees. The mall losing Macy’s has Penny’s and Target remaining. Though many vacant spaces are scattered through out the complex. In 2020, I worked the U.S. Census They had their regional HQ there. It felt like Get Smart. One would knock on a plain door with a peep hole. You would be buzzed into a bustling cubical space. Since I was working in the field, I rarely visited the office.
As the population ages, there will be more and more people with disability and mobility issues. E-commerce is important, in many cases essential, to them.
Eggs…. Looked at a wall full of eggs in the grocery store yesterday and wondered “will they have to put these eggs on sale as they approach their “Best Buy/Expiration Date” ?
Which triggered one of my big annoyances: How hard they make it to find and read what the expiration date is on eggs.. and many other items. I have been thinking I need to start taking a magnifying glass with me to the store.
LOL, I can relate!
I actually bought a handful of magnifying cards on Amazon which can fit into a wallet and provide a 300% magnification.
Then I realized that I could use the camera on my phone to see what the heck the tiny labels actually say, but I still have the 3x card in my wallet to use in case of emergencies😂
What are the economic and logistical limits of home delivery ?
I don’t know what it’s really like to UPS/Fedex delivery guys – In many ways I can see that it would be a good job. Out on the road, active – but always at the bleeding edge of “cost containment”. Management always dreaming up a new “incentives” to squeeze more out of you while giving nothing back and telling their drivers “our way or the highway”.
Once retail is buried and delivery demand doubles and doubles again and we find that the economics just don’t work. What then ?
Most delivery guys for Instacart, Grubhub, and Amazon (the ones that are not employed by Amazon), are the working poor. Most are independent contractors with no benefits, often relying on tips for a big part of their income. UPS/Fedex guys are a whole different ballgame, salaried with benefits. There will always be poor people, always some willing to do this kind of work.
And that’s got to be brutal work. In and out of a car is extremely tiring for some reason (and I’m not a lazy guy).
Wolf, you should have a premium service and publish more opinion pieces about stocks you think will fall. I recall your SVB opinion was spot-on, as well as several spacs and solar stocks. You have potential to start scaling up like Zero Hedge. Jon
We joke that our home is furnished in “Early American Garage Sale” style. We’re fortunate to live in an area where the thrift shops and flea markets frequently have great stuff for pennies on the dollar. The last time I walked through Kohl’s, I was just gob-smacked by the prices. I assume the ecommerce offering are similarly expensive. I suspect a lot of folks are about to discover the difference between “needs” and “wants”, ecommerce will also feel the pinch. Could be totally wrong, but I walked out saying “DAMN!”
Welcome to my world growing up. Groceries were all kept behind a counter where a grocer took your list to fill, bringing out any new item he thought you might like.
Furnished out our home with items bought at local farm auctions and flea markets. Moving from a large three room house to six rooms and filling it up some years later.
Son came in today with four dozen hen eggs and six duck eggs. After washing and testing for freshness, use a pan of water, if it floats it’s rotten, he threw two into the garden. More from last week came from the same twenty dollars he gave the owner then.
Times have changed but the old ways work yet today.
Reread this several times as I didn’t want a mistype as Wolf doesn’t allow corrections.
No disrespect WHATSOEVER to Wolf, but if brick and mortar stores have been doing so poorly, WHY is it that every time I go to Costco, it’s
gangbuster busy? One could argue that it’s ‘wholesale’ which I don’t agree with, but it could be argued. Walmart- ditto – always crazy busy. No brick and mortar meltdowns there.
Honestly, I do buy some limited things on the
‘Big A’ but only because of low prices and my limited income at present. I hate the fact that it’s is an absolute monopoly, unchecked by government regulation and with almost zero competition. So, what happens when ALL STORES go bankrupt- just the ‘Big A’ left standing. Watch out!
I’m going to make it my springtime resolution to boycott the ‘Big A’ and only shop at brick and mortar stores! No joke.
RTGDFA. Not just the title.
It specifically talks about DEPARTMENT STORES.
It also specifically talks about Walmart, which is NOT a department store (nor is Costco), but you didn’t RTGDFA, so you don’t know.
This is the Mallpocalypse grinding onward to its inevitable conclusion.
How to save B&M stores? Offer something unique that customers just can’t get from the convenience of clicking around online…
Theme Nights
Exclusive merchandise
Doorbusters
Experiences
Actual customer service
I’ll admit that it’s been a couple of years since I last shopped at Kohl’s. However, the last time was a miserable experience. The store was severely understaffed, and the clothing displays were universally a MESS. I wanted a pair of pants, but had to spend 20 minutes pawing through the jumbled pile of pants to find the size and style I was seeking. The whole store looked like a tornado had torn through it.
And the prices were significantly higher than Amazon. I never went back.