Turning Off the Blue Light?. The writing on the wall suggests that you may soon be saying goodbye to Kmart. [The Motley Fool]
I have a bigger question. We now have no less than 4 stores in the cheap niche (Wal-Mart - the gorilla, Target, KMart and Sears - to a certain extent). At the next level, we have Sears, Federated (Hechts), Kohls and JC Penny's, and then we have Federated (Macy's) Nordstroms and Sachs. My first question is why do we need so many of them. In my neck of the woods, we have no less than 6 major malls and at least 6 strip malls (in the they are not covered but they are more than just laundry and groceries category) within 20 miles of each other and three more under construction (that I am aware of). Again - why? If each mall/retail area offered different products or mix of products, I could understand, but instead, each has a similar inventory (although not always the same stock levels) and you spend more time running from store to store becuase they do not have what you want in your size (or colour or fabric) but the guy up the street does.
Of course, this leads to a mess of issues. On the bad side, traffic, environmental damage (heck, if you have to rip up a bunch of trees to build a mall, that cannot be good can it?), and general frustration (which leads to stress, gum disease, kicking the dog etc). On the good side it can be argued that it increases employment (some of the people being employed need to have some lessons in basic customer services, money handling and stock management, but that is a different discussion) as well as improving the overall quality of life. I have heard a couple of arguements for actually reducing traffic, but I have yet to see any emperical studies that back those statements up.
So we loose a few KMart stores. And the strip malls they are in go dark becasue the big draw is no longer there etc, and I hear the violins playing as people loose their jobs and there is a big eyesore etc. Sorry, it does not wash. Yes, the economy is in the tank at the moment, but part of that is because there is so much over commercialization that there needs to be some failures. You cannot have a Starbucks on every corner and expect to make money. Well, maybe you can, but I would argue that you cannot have two Sears stores within 20 miles of each other and expect to make money (although Wal-Mart seems to do it - but I haven't figured out how - I would guess it has more to do with the stocking of staples than it does with the luxury items).
I am not trying to be difficult here. I am trying to preserve some land for something other than roads, houses and shopping malls. At the rate houses are being built in the Metro Washington area we will not have any greenspace left by the end of the decade. But if we continue to build malls, we will not have to go more than a block to get what we need, except that they will not have our size, but the one in Springfield does, at least according to the computer, which cannot be depended on to be correct anyway.
11:04:43 AM 
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