Linens and mervyns victims of the credit and economic crisis
I've been gone for some time. While the closing of stores such as CrazyEddies, TwoGuys, Rickels, Herman's Sporting Goods, Caldors, Bradlees, Nobody Beats the Wiz, to name a few, are old news, the more recent news (okay a few years) was Ames and KitchenEtc. Also, a Kmart close to me was closed; but there was another one still nearby. In addition, a signficant number of CompUSA stores closed doors. Now there are only just a few CompUSA around the US. As a result of the recent economic downturn in 3rd quarter 2008, slumping sales, decline in real estate market, downturn in consumer spending and frozen credit markets, both Linens-N-Things and mervyns have announced the closings of all their stores. LNT filed Ch.11 in May'08, but since they had problems to meet needs of creditors, decided to pull the plug on all US stores. LNT closeout sales began Oct. 16, 2008 Thursday. Mervyns (CA-based) is expected to close its stores after the holiday shopping season. Today, CircuitCity announced it will close ~150 stores (including those poor performing ones) to prevent itself from filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I'm not sure which stores will be closing, and what happens to their current inventories--will it be liquified at reduced prices (compared to their most popular competitors BestBuy, RadioShack, PC Richards, Target, Expo). Of course, sometimes those warehouse wholesale stores of Sam's Club, Costco, and BJ's sell electronics too. It's sad for these stores to go; as it also means several hundreds of jobs will be lost, and eventually vacant lots and less business taxes to local economies. Unfortunately, I dont need anything at LNT; but, when they start offering great buys, I may just browse their store to see things that I would like to have for my future home. At that time, usually the junk is left or the most expensive items that people just dont buy even at reduced prices.
Labels: closing, linens n things, mervyns
