Title: Why Retail Companies Are Closing Stores
Headings: Why Retail Companies Are Closing Stores
Why Retail Companies Are Closing Stores
Online Competition
The Decline of Malls
Private-Equity Debt
Quarterly Announcements

Content: If the pace continues, major retailers could shutter as many as 12,000 stores by year-end, Coresight forecasts. In that case, the number of closures would come close to doubling the 6,163 that occurred in 2008, the only full calendar year in the Great Recession. Online Competition
Part of the explanation for retail chains' difficulties since 2017—what some have called the "retail apocalypse"—is the continuing trend of Americans making purchases online. Consumers enjoy the freedom of shopping on their computer or phone and avoiding trips to a store that may not have had what they were looking for anyway. As of the first quarter of 2019, e-commerce purchases accounted for 10.2 percent of all retail sales, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That percentage has risen steadily since 2000. Amazon.com, the largest U.S. e-commerce company, had about 103 million paying subscribers to its Amazon Prime service in March 2019. That figure represents about 80 percent of U.S. households . The Decline of Malls
Another contributor to the surge in store closings is the rise and inevitable fall of largely suburban malls as a shopping destination. The number of U.S. malls grew more than twice as fast as the population from 1970 to 2015, The Atlantic reported, citing Cowen and Company research.