Walmart Closing Down Stores Nationwide Due To Financial Struggles
Walmart is closing down a slew of stores in various places across the nation due to financial struggles that have arisen at those locations because of rampant retail theft.
Walmart, our nation’s most successful retail chain, announced earlier this year that they would be closing down ten stores around the country. Those locations were located in Washington DC, Illinois, New Mexico, Florida, Oregon, and Washington, and the closures were due to poor sales performance and the inability to meet company sales expectations. However, this week they announced they were adding more locations to the growing list of location closures, and this time they cited theft as the reason for the location closures.
The new retail stores that were added to the list are located in South Bend, Brooklyn, Oahu, Everett, Minnesota, and a few other places. This is terrible news for local consumers and employees of the retail giant. According to cordcutternews.com, quoting a statement by Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, “employees at these closing stores will have the opportunity to transfer to other locations, with nearly 600 workers affected by these closures.”
This was from the same statement where McMillon attributed the root cause of the closures to retail theft, which has been a growing problem for retailers and trending upward for the last few years. This type of theft has become a $100 million problem for companies across the board. Some retailers have started locking down more items in cases that require consumers to notify an employee for assistance to be able to purchase the desired item.
Not only is this strategy attempting to deter criminals from getting easy-to-grab resalable items, but the side effect is it has deterred consumers to use more convenient online options to buy these products. They are choosing that option over dealing with the hassle of tracking down an employee and waiting for them to open the case just so they can purchase the product. Especially since they can now click a few buttons on their phone, and the product will be on their doorstep the next day.
This diversion of revenue is compounding the problem for companies like Walmart. This new round of closures could be an indication that Walmart is struggling to compete in the current retail environment. Companies like Amazon and other large virtual retailers have taken a huge bite out of the pie that Walmart used to have all to itself.
Unfortunately, that is business 101, as a company, you either can adapt to shifts in the market environment or wind up closing for good. They certainly wouldn’t be the first company to hold a mammoth share of a particular market, and because of the inflexibility to adapt to the changing tide. Those companies are no longer in existence, and if they are still in business, they are a paltry shell of what they used to be.
The two people that really lose because of this next wave of location closures are the consumers of Walmart in these local markets. They have become accustomed to their retailer offering a wide breadth of products in one place and at the lowest prices. These consumers will be faced with decisions on whether to use more gas to go shopping at the next closest location or shop in multiple stores to get everything they used to get under one roof.
