Prediction of store closures

Report claims that 80,000 stores will close in the next 5 years, mainly because of online shopping.

If needed.

Store closings peaked in 20-19, but a new u-s-b report predicts nine percent of all stores will close in the next five years.

News 12's brian armstrong joins us now live with what this means for area businesses, and how they can adjust.

The u-s-b report shows 80 thousand stores nationwide will shut its doors in the next five years.

Shopping used to be done almost exclusively in places like malls and other stores.

It certainly hasn't disappeared, but online shopping has consistently been on the rise especially in the past year due to covid.

When you look at the last two or three years it is going through the contraction that was happening pre-covid, covid just accelerated it.

Just look at e-commerce growth the last year, e-commerce is accelerated with 10 years of growth.

Fillogic is a logistics solutions company for retailers.

Fillogic co-founder bill thayer says as the industry continues to evolve toward e- commerce companies need to be able to pivot to succeed.

Non-anchor stores were never designed to operate like fulfillment locations.

They were set up to be able to handle walk-in traffic.

When you throw in e-commerce fulfillment the infrastructure and of course the technology up until a couple of years ago wasn't up to snuff.

Thayer says the traditional brick- and-mortar store is not dead but, it's in a state of transformation.

There are 1100 and close shopping malls, we feel that they probably should be seven or 800.

Look at someone like amazon, they spend tens of billions of dollars building a logistics network.

That network has always existed, it's shopping malls.

The only problem is they don't have aggregated logistics to be able to optimize that process.

He says stores in the chattanooga area and north georgia need to focus on the success of combining both in-person and e- commerce.

E-commerce of scale is not cheap.

You are just focusing on the direct-to-consumer aspect of it.

You missed the very personal and cost-effective aspect of connecting people in stores.

Logistics companies like fillogic are working with companies to help manage the combination of brick and mortar stores and e-commerce.

We work with our three partners retailers mall honors and their parcel carriers to take this and utilize space and working together across platforms so retailers can use their assets more efficiently.

He says the u-s has roughly 6 times the amount of stores than any other area so some closures are expected but an adjustment in logistics can help stores and companies succeed.

Reporting live brian armstrong news