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We have a national trend of Department Stores closing for over two decades and there are a few people on here who blame it on one thing....crime. My feeling is these people are pretty much fed Corporate News B.S. about the fate of our USA this election year...which the media does to promote an even more extreme right turn into F#cism.
Disregarding History
Disregarding a Twenty Years of Department Store Decline Nation wide.
Disregarding the historical facts that cities in the 60's, 70's and 80's had much higher crime level, but the department stores stayed put.
Disregarding easy economics. The pie is only so big....what with the explosion of Amazon and such in sales, where do you think they got all their customers from?
Department stores use to lead, we use to go to different ones in the same cities because they were vibrant and unique. Now they all look the same. If you go to one, you've been to all.
Outlet stores - where do you think I went 30 years ago when I found out I could get my shoes for 25% the cost, the store could pay rent, employees and make a profit on my paying 25% of the original cost.
While it is very sad to see the down turns in our cities, when they occur, remember they are like a phoenix and will rise again. Not the same, but better.
Wish in America we had easier problems, like England does this week with their fake photo of Kate scandal! Now there is a real story!
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Is calling someone disingenuous an insult?
If you call someone disingenuous, then yeah, you're being offensive. But if you call the idea disingenuous, then it's much less offensive. If you phrase it like, "isn't that a little disingenuous?" it's even less offensive yet (I think "isn't that a lie" would come off a fair bit more offensive).
I was just asking for fact not fiction in regards to the SF closing and not expecting to get slammed for it.
I'm not going to candy coat anything for you.
And don't try to play the victim when you get called out on your BS.
Macy’s has a new CEO, facing declining in store and digital sales and is in the midst of fending off a hostile takeover.
Crime has nothing to do with it’s trying to restructure and store closings, if anything Covid-19 and consumers pulling away from these iconic stores such as JC Penney and Best Buy which both are declining rapidly with brick and mortar locations.
This started out as a thread about another retail giant getting sucked into the abyss as what happened to Sears and somehow it has become focused on crime which has nothing to do with Macy’s 150 locations.
This is an election year and politicians need soap box issues. We visited the Macy’s in SF when visiting family this past summer and the only thing out of the ordinary was the lack of shoppers, you could feel the resemblance to Sears when they were on the way out.
Unfortunately, I'm not surprised it's been reduced to this. To be fair, theft is always a consideration (and challenge) for brick and mortar retail. I haven't seen Macy's cite it specifically (though store employees did mention it in SF which is what kicked off the "CRIME!" press coverage of the store's pending closure), but it's been mentioned by both Walgreens and CVS during their closures in recent years. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that the ever-present challenge of theft is a factor at Macy's and brick and mortar retail across the board. Especially when combined with everything you mentioned above (and in the case of San Francisco, a local daytime population which has shrunk drastically do to WFH).
However, if the store was making money hand over fist and shoplifting were the only challenge, Macy's could find ways to reduce that. And if shoppers were still coming in in droves, it would help to offset losses from theft. But since in-store shopping is down, it's much harder to make up for those losses. And I'm sure it's easier to spot a shoplifter when there are so few actual shoppers there. So it's disingenuous to cite "crime" as the sole reason for the closure. Even the SF Macy's employees in the article linked above acknowledge that a decline in shoppers is a major factor.
Another huge thing that sets the SF Macy's apart is that they actually own the building. For a company that's closing 150 stores and hemorrhaging money, the value of that property (probably more than a quarter billion dollars) is likely worth far more than a store in its place. And they're well beyond the days where they're successful enough brand to keep an unprofitable store in a premier location (like Union Square or Times Square) just to demonstrate it's a prestige brand.
But in an election year, the closure of a landmark retail establishment in the heart of a city symbolic of of progressivism in America, fixation on "CRIME!" is low hanging fruit. So I'm hardly surprised.
And I'm sure it's easier to spot a shoplifter when there are so few actual shoppers there. So it's disingenuous to cite "crime" as the sole reason for the closure.
The San Francisco Macy's isn't closing due to shoplifters. That is not what is meant when stating crime is the reason for the store closing. The crime is on the streets....and that's why there are so few shoppers now.
The San Francisco Macy's isn't closing due to shoplifters. That is not what is meant when stating crime is the reason for the store closing. The crime is on the streets....and that's why there are so few shoppers now.
Do you have a source? The quotes from employees specifically mentioned shoplifting, not street crime. And downtown SF was decimated by WFH. The office vacancy rate there is 36% (a record). That's essentially a disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people from the area. Without a source pointing to street crime as the issue, I'm much likelier to believe the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people from the area for much of the week is the primary culprit for the lack of shoppers. It's really just common sense.
The San Francisco Macy's isn't closing due to shoplifters. That is not what is meant when stating crime is the reason for the store closing. The crime is on the streets....and that's why there are so few shoppers now.
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Originally Posted by lrfox
Do you have a source? The quotes from employees specifically mentioned shoplifting, not street crime. And downtown SF was decimated by WFH. The office vacancy rate there is 36% (a record). That's essentially a disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people from the area. Without a source pointing to street crime as the issue, I'm much likelier to believe the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people from the area for much of the week is the primary culprit for the lack of shoppers. It's really just common sense.
The crime and drug use is out of control, and all of Union Square is suffering the same fate.
Location: Earth, a nice neighborhood in the Milky Way
3,776 posts, read 2,683,716 times
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Originally Posted by JBtwinz
Where is your source that crime is forcing Macy’s to close this location?
She does not have one. She is relatively competent at using a search engine, so if she had a source to back up her assertion, she would post it. When she strains her nether regions to produce a San Francisco Sidewalk Surprise, as she has done here, she merely cries “is too” when she is called out on her Kompulsive Kow Krap. Over and over again. In spite of her extensive experience at being wrong, she can never admit it.
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