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By: Jude McCormack
Feb. 14
Stores. There are so many store brands in the world, so much so that if you wanted to count them all, you might as well be counting the stars in the night sky. But, sadly, with all of the store brands on Earth, there are closures of stores as well. This article will be taking a closer look at the not-so-mysterious disappearance of the biggest brands there is, and also how to prepare for the imminent closing of these stores.
Starbucks
Despite this company’s huge impact on multiple social platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts, it has seen a big decline in the past couple years, eventually leading to the closure of 400 stores across the US. This is because the company wants to embrace the “on-the-go” craze. Over the pandemic, the company’s sales were 43% lower than the year before, forcing the company to make renovations to its stores to, again, appeal to the average Starbucks customer who often takes their coffee on the go. This company managed to pull itself together in the end, however, an
An image of a Starbucks Coffee store located in NYC.
Walmart
Walmart has seen a big decline in the number of stores in the past couple of years from the most stores the company had in a while (11,443 stores in 2021) to 10,623 stores, making this Walmart’s worst year in almost a decade. The company closed multiple stores due to the stores “underperforming, or falling short of financial expectations.” The selected stores were (as the company claims) losing tens of millions of dollars a year. This is not good for the company, and it is likely that we will see a sheer decline in the number of stores that the company has, likely resulting in a sharp decline in revenue.
Party City
In January of 2023, after a long string of financial losses from 2019, failing to pay off an impressive 1.7 billion dollar debt, and competition from e-commerce, the company filed for bankruptcy. On top of the multiple setbacks, there has been a fairly new one relating to helium shortage. Everyone knows that helium fills balloons, but because of a worldwide helium shortage, it has forced the company to close 45 stores of its own. There may be more closures due to less and less helium. Jackson Wells, a sixth grader at EJHS, shares his opinions on it; “It’s really sad seeing a lot of stores close. I have a lot of memories of going shopping at Party City for my sister’s birthday party. I’m going to miss it a lot."
On April of 2022, the CVS located on Morgan street had an article released about its closure.
CVS Pharmacy
Even after housing an impressive 9,402 stores across the country, the company says that it is expected to close an entire 900 stores, almost 10% of all of its stores as of 2024. The company says that this massive wave of closure is to try and adjust to the modern online shopper, and to prevent the amount of shoplifting that there has been for the past few years. According to CapitalOne (an American bank company), retail theft would cost stores a projected $115 billion by 2025. This action was in hopes of preventing this theft from happening, and so far, it worked.
Those are a lot of things to prepare for. Sadly, many store brands are coming and going. From shopping for basic groceries at Walmart, to buying party supplies at Party City, and getting prescriptions and shots at CVS, it’s all going to end. Thank you for reading this article, and if you’re interested, fill out the form below to give us feedback on how to make our articles better!
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