16 Major Retail Chains Closing Stores Across America

Daniel Jennings writes for Wealthy Debates, April 4, 2014, that despite all the talk from the Obama administration and the MSM about a “recovering” economy, a retail tsunami shows the U.S. economy to be in trouble.

Recent news stories show that American retail is in dire straits. Here are 16 big retail companies that have closed or will close stores soon:

1. Office supply company Staples has announced plans to close 225 stores by 2015, which is about 15% of its chain. Staples already closed 40 stores last year.
2. Office Depot, Staples’ main competitor which bought Office Max last year, isn’t in good shape either. Industry analysts expect Office Depot to announce its own round of store closings soon.
3. Radio Shack has announced plans to close 20% of its stores or as many as 1,100 stores this year. The company, which operates around 4,000 stores, reported that its sales fell by 19% last year.
4. Albertsons supermarket closed 26 stores in January and February this year. Analysts expect many more Albertsons to be closed down because Albertsons’ owner hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management just bought Safeway Inc. Some Safeway stores could soon shut down as well.
5. Clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch is planning to close 220 stores by the end of 2015. The company is also planning to shut down the Gilly Hicks chain, which has 20 stores.
6. Barnes & Nobles is planning to shut down one third of its stores or about 218 stores in the next year. The chain has already closed its iconic flagship store in New York City.
7. J.C. Penney is closing about 33 stores and laying off about 2,000 employees.
8. Toys R Us has plans to close 100 stores.
9. The Sweetbay Supermarket chain will close all 17 of the stores it operates in the Tampa Bay area. Many of the stores might open as Winn-Dixie Stores. Sweetbay closed 33 stores in Florida last year.
10. The entire Loehmann’s chain of discount clothing stores in the New York City area shut down. Loehmann’s once operated 39 stores and was considered an institution by generations of New Yorkers.
11. Sears Holdings, which owns both Sears and Kmart, is expected to close another 500 stores this year. Sears has already shut down its flagship store in Chicago.
12. Quiznos has filed for bankruptcy and could close many of its 2,100 stores.
13. Sbarro, which operates pizza and Italian restaurants in malls, is planning to close 155 locations (or 20% of its restaurants) in North America (U.S. and Canada). The chain operates around 800 outlets.
14. Ruby Tuesday announced plans to close 30 restaurants in January after its sales fell by 7.8%. The chain currently operates around 775 steakhouses across the US.
15. An unknown number of Red Lobster stores will be sold. The chain is in such bad shape that the parent company, Darden Restaurants Inc., had to issue a press release stating that the chain would not close. Instead Darden is planning to spin Red Lobster off into another company and sell some of its stores.
16. Ralph’s, a subsidiary of Kroger, has announced plans to close 15 supermarkets in Southern California within 60 days.
17. Safeway closed 72 Dominick’s grocery stores in the Chicago area last year.

All those store closures mean more Americans will be unemployed, which translates into less tax revenue and more dependency on government welfare.

H/t FOTM’s swampygirl

~Eowyn