With all these giant retailers closing stores or liquidating the last few

[doc03]

months I think we are in for a recession. We have Sears, Kmart, Elder Beerman, Staples, Radio Shack, The Gap,
HH Gregg, Penny's, Macy's and Game Stop and probably others I have missed all closing hundreds of stores. The auto industry
is also cutting back and laying people off. This has been the second longest bull market in history, a recession is overdue. In addition
we have total fool as president.

[still_one]

1. A lot of this has to do with the predatory practices of Amazon

[napi21]

14. I don't see Amazon as a predator. I admit, I'm biased because I'm in a weheel chair and it's SOOO

MUCH EASIER for me to buy online, and especially with the free shipping with Prime. I do crafting and wait for Joanne of Michaels to offer free shipping, and many other sites too. I don't have to beg for a ride somewhere, and I don't have to ge fro store to store looking for something they don't have.

There are lots of people who "Just want to hold it in my hand" or "try it on" that keep the B&M stores busy, but they have to pursue some additional ways to compensate for online stores.

Why do you say Amazon is predatory?

[still_one]

16. For 20 years the government had subsidized Amazon sales with special sales tax breaks, while local

merchants were not afforded the same benefits. That fact alone allowed Bezos to grab market dominance at the cost of hurting local economies.

Because of Bezos' market dominance he is able to sell merchandize at a cost, or even a loss. That is predatory pricing, and monopoly like.

His model sets up local retailers to act as a showrooms for Amazon, where shoppers come into small local merchants to view the merchandize, and then leave without buying from the local merchant, and buy from Amazon.

Bezos has setup a virtual monopoly that local merchants, who supply local jobs, cannot compete with. He pretty much succeeded in that regard with books. You won't see too many local bookstores around anymore.

Bezos is killing off local businesses, and turning work into a low-wage nightmare.

They are a corporate oligarch

[milestogo]

18. I talked to someone who wanted to sell products on Amazon

that they produced themselves. Amazon seller fees are enormous for small businesspeople.

[still_one]

19. The small person doesn't stand a chance

[crazycatlady]

37. Etsy

[Marthe48]

36. I think some people on some level, are afraid to go out in public

if the phobes don't get ya, the gun nuts will.

Fear doesn't really stop me, but I shop around and if I can get it cheaper online, I get it online. I won't shop at walmart until I have no choice and their claim that they are cheaper is a big lie.

[guillaumeb]

2. As wages stagnate, spending drops.

WalMart and the various dollar store type businesses profit. As do Payday lenders and auto title lenders. All signs of a weak economy.

[dalton99a]

8. Yep.

[rzemanfl]

3. Watch what happens to foreign tourism. Florida is in for it. n/t

[Initech]

4. California too.

We have just about as many theme parks as Florida does, and not to mention all the tourist destinations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. People are avoiding the US because of that fucking asshole in chief and what he's done. It's going to be an economic bloodbath. I hope the Kochs and the Mercers sleep easier at night.

[marybourg]

5. There was a day when Sears, Penney's, Macy's,

The Gap - those are the ones I'm familiar with - carried reasonably good quality stuff. Now they have the same Chinese crap as the cut-price stores like Kmart and Walmart. Why should anybody shop in them?

[Skittles]

6. I agree

the cheap offshore crap is everywhere now

[HeartachesNhangovers]

11. Just like Japan and Korea before them,

Chinese businesses have been improving the quality of their exports in order to be able to justify higher prices. Japanese products used to be called crap, but Japanese manufactured goods have been top-quality for decades now. One of the dirty secrets of the clothing businesses is that, for years now, many expensive clothing items correctly labelled "Made in Italy" are made in Chinese-owned and operated facilities in Italy.

The Chinese aren't going away, and they will be followed by other low-cost countries.

[JI7]

22. there ARE differences in Chinese Made items

the better quality stuff will of course cost more money than the cheaper stuff.

in fact there are some high end designers that get their bags made in China and you can tell the difference between one of their bags v some other chinese made bags.

BUT i have found there are also many american made items and it doesn't have to be that expensive.

[rurallib]

7. There has been some spectacularly bad management decisions in the mix also

Not sure about all of them, but Sears have been horrible and I believe Penney's has been bad. Staples got vultured; the world passed Radio Shack by.

What you say is probably true, though. I know I am being quite careful with my purchases these days.

[doc03]

10. Yes we know these companies made bad decisions but hundreds of stores closing

adds up to thousands of jobs. Every year there are some stores that go under after the Christmas season but I have never seen a melt down like this in my lifetime. This reminds me of 2008 when I was working in the steel industry. The company called the union in for a special meeting in either September or October of 2008 we were told that almost every outstanding order we had was canceled and we had literally no orders after January 1st of 2009. At the end of March 2009 the company shut down permanently after operating for over 150 years. You add this to auto layoffs and a downturn in international tourism and I think we are headed for a recession.

[hatrack]

13. Reading about Sears in the business news for a while now . . .

Apparently, they got stuck with this Randroid clown who believed in competition - pitting manager against manager, department against department, region against region. You see, the miracle of unbridled greed would just ensure that the talent rose to the top, and prosperity would bloom.

Except, of course, that it didn't. Sears very quickly became a place where nobody with any talent or humanity wanted to work The CEO was happy to work there, though, since he walked off with millions (naturally).

[CK_John]

9. There will be no malls for Black Friday shopping this year. Automation

is coming faster than any politico realized. The CEO know when it's time to fold.

[cwydro]

28. Oh I think there will be.

Black Friday isn't a thing of the past quite yet. Nor are malls.

[msongs]

12. american would rather buy china crap cheap than save their own or neighbors' jobs nt

[roamer65]

15. A lot of Americans want to see their neighbors worse off, not better.

Sad, but true.

[napi21]

17. I don't believe that! There are a lot of people who just can't afford anything more than the cheap

crap and it's not only from China! I've seen labels for clothing made in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania, and a lot of diff. countries where their is a very poor economy, and they CAN hire people to work for next to nothing. I've tried checking labels for something made in America that I could send for Christmas to relatives living overseas. I checked Macy's, Sax (couldn't afford anything there), Belk's, and all other upper income patrons. I could not find ANY clothing that wasn't imported from some third world country!

I try to buy USA made products when they are available, but I've found very few made in the USA.

I don't know much about ocean freight, but I have to believe it's not cheap! I'd like to know if someone other than the importers who did a complete analysis of making an item in the USA v/s making it overseas, with cheap wages and expensive ocean freight costs, and what REALLY is the diff. I'll bet its not as profitable as corp's clients know it is. I think the real difference between third country produced good are substandard to that made in the US is mainly quality! IF the US made clothing using substandard yard goods, they would be able to match or exceed the cost of the same good made in a third world company.

[milestogo]

20. Its not just that its cheap crap, but that it becomes obsolete faster and faster.

You buy an electronic device and a year later they don't make it anymore and you can't get yours fixed. It used to be that if you spent $100 on something you expected it to last a few years. Now its going into landfill in a year or two.

You buy a $600 smartphone and a year later its a piece of old junk you're supposed to replace.

Same with your television, microwave, computer, you name it. Nothing is made to last unless it was made before 1970.

[napi21]

24. Some things are like that for sure, but not all. I had my last car last 16 years without anything

but reg. maintenance. My fridg was 18 yrs old when replaced, washer & dryer are 27 yr old now and still fine, The only thing I found to be unreliable long term was my desk top computer.

[milestogo]

25. Yeah, appliances are pretty good because they are heavily used

and they have to be. But things that are luxury items don't seem to be made as well.

My grandmother's Singer sewing machine still works and it is many many years old.

[ProfessorGAC]

29. I Know The Feeling Napi

I drive a convertible, but as a result of some things that happened over the last 20 years, i've always had a different, older car, that i drive in the winter.

I'm driving a 1998 Chrysler Concorde in the winter now. And, the worst things that have happened is the little plastic bearing that hold the strut bottom in place broke making the strut pop out of the support. Had to have it towed to the guy about 6 blocks away, but a cheap repair. $50 bucks or so and done in a few hours.

The other thing was one of the banding straps that supports the gas tank corroded and broke. The guys at the 10 minute oil change place helped me fix that with ratchet straps. I'll probably get a piece welded on when the good weather comes and i start driving the ragtop.

That's pretty good reliability for a 20 year car.

[exboyfil]

27. I have a perfectly adequate Smartphone for $25

I do agree with your point about appliances no longer built to last. My 80s era washer and dryer survived three moves and over 20 years of use. Our first replacement drier less than five years even after one repair.

Electronics in general are not built to be repaired. For example a 40" Sony HDTV for $250 that I just bought. I may be part of the problem with the economy because I am a late adopter of technology, and I hold onto it until it breaks. I also look for price points in purchasing even after inflation (unwillingness to spend more than $300 for a television or laptop computer). We just replaced our refrigerator with a like model for $350 ($150 after taking off $200 from Kmart buyers points).

I am banging out this post with a six year old laptop that cost around $250.

[pstokely]

35. things break quicker

Last edited Fri Mar 31, 2017, 12:10 AM - Edit history (1)

had to replace 5 year Panasonic flat screen TV last summer, Panasonic doesn't even make TVs that size anymore

[crazycatlady]

38. I've seen this before

I run an Etsy store and sell handmade items occasionally at craft fairs/flea markets (jewelry) and at protests (pussyhats) and people expect to have things for pennies on the dollar.

I tell people that my prices (especially for the pussyhats) for just labor is McDonald's wages.

[JI7]

21. most of these closures have to do with their own failed business strategies. Sears,Kmart and Radio

Shack should have closed long time ago. Kmart and Sears look like some old warehouse from some decades ago with bad lighting .

Macys opened too many stores .

[madville]

23. Half of those should have closed down over a decade ago

Sears, Kmart, Staples, Radio Shack, etc have survived way past their expiration, I wonder who is dumb enough to keep injecting them with capital? Game Stop has been on borrowed time with the acceptance of downloadable games and content. Why buy a physical disc when you can download a GB or two in a few minutes?

[eniwetok]

31. There are ALWAYS chains going out of business...

In the last 40 years I remember these department store chains closing here in New England...

Zayer
Two Guys
Bradlies
JM Fields
Ames
Almes (sp)
Lechmere

Going back 50 years
Towers
Topps
Woolworths
Grants
Mammoth Mart

[ProfessorGAC]

33. Of Those You Mentioned. . .

. . .we had Zayer, Topps, Woolworth, Grants (officially WT Grant's, but everyone just called it Grants) in the midwest too. Long gone. We also had a fleet of Ben Franklin stores that no longer exist.

There were 2 Zayers, a Topps, 3 WW and 2 Grants all within probably 15 miles of where we lived.

Then we had Goldblatt's, Boston Store, Weiboldt's and Montgomery Ward's, all over the place. All also long gone.

[Cha]

26. Wow.. I had no idea.. "Staples" supported romney in 2012..

just a fyi I remember from back then.

Total fool as a blotus who doesn't give a shit as long as he's not losing $$$$$$.. but what happens when he does?

[Vinca]

30. A recession is a sure thing anyway once you get a Republican in office.

It could be a mess of epic proportions this time around and - like Obama - a Dem will be elected to clean it up.

[MineralMan]

32. Most of those giant chain retailers dismissed

the Internet for far too long. As they did that, online retailing developed and launched a new model for shopping. Had the old retail giants embraced the Internet early, they wouldn't be struggling today. I remember when Sears dropped its catalog shopping model right at the time Internet shopping was beginning to grow quickly. If they had moved to an Internet marketing model that allowed customers to shop online and either have products shipped to them or picked up at the local Sears store, they might not be in the mess they're in today.

Frankly, there was no longer a way that a brick and mortar focus could continue to be viable, starting in about 2005. Now, they're closing stores and about to shut down completely, because they ignored the new methods for too long.

It's a shame that it will cause job losses, but the whole disaster could have been avoided with some forward thinking.

[eniwetok]

34. what price do we pay for ineffiencent business model?

A brick and mortar store like Best Buy has to have stock in every store... adding overhead costs. They need to have a big sales staff in every store that needs to be trained in the area. Amazon can have 30% of the stock of the entire Best Buy chain... and ship it anywhere... and they only need to have warehouse crews route things correctly and not break things.

I'm not defending Amazon... but the cost savings of their model, thus their competitive advantage, is pretty obvious.