Chain store closing can be blow, blessing

Small businesses can see a rise in sales; others must work harder to be noticed

When big retail chains close stores, it can be a blow or a blessing for small businesses near the shuttered merchants.

Many shoppers gravitate to a smaller store when one of the big players shuts down, says Aric Shlifka, the owner of Kiddles Sports in Lake Forest, Ill. The demise of the Sports Authority last year has contributed to a 5 percent increase in business for him since then, and he’s noticed more demand for athletic shoes and bicycles in particular.

“I feel mass/chain store closings scare people, and make them realize how many jobs and tax dollars are lost and want to support the local retailers more,” Shlifka says.

As more shoppers shift online, stores have been suffering and chains have been cutting back.

Some businesses can see their own sales suffer when a big nearby retailer that has been a shopper magnet disappears. But smaller retail competitors can pick up customers, and sometimes other businesses — ancillary or unrelated to retail — find opportunities in vacant real estate.

The retail remains of a shuttered store mean franchisees of 1-800GOT-JUNK? often get contracts to empty out the chain stores, loading dump trucks with unwanted mannequins, shelving, racks, showcases and other fixtures and hauling it all away.

James Williams, owner of a 1800-GOT-JUNK franchise in Burbank, Calif., says that in removing the contents of a store, his company donates usable equipment like vacuum cleaners to charities and takes furniture and fixtures to businesses that will recycle what they can. But there’s also a downside. “Some of these were clients that we were serving on a weekly or monthly basis,” Williams says.

When a department store in a shopping mall or big box store in a strip center closes, nearby retailers can see fewer shoppers and lower sales. Some mall operators have staged events and activities to attract more shoppers.

Yogibo, which sells bean bag chairs and other casual furniture, had to work harder to make itself more visible to shoppers after Sears vacated parts of its stores in malls in Freehold, N.J., and Danbury, Conn., CEO Eyal Levy says. The retailer had a 10 percent sales slide while the Sears space was vacant, and also has had lower sales since a J.C. Penney store shut in Natick, Mass. two years ago.

So it has increased its advertising, offering its chairs to mall operators for events like children’s story hours.

“We had to be more active. We couldn’t rely on mall foot traffic,” Levy says.

On the flip side, when a new tenant moves into the big, empty space, sales at smaller shops pick up as shoppers return to that part of the mall. Yogibo’s sales rose between 10 percent and 15 percent when clothing retailer Primark moved into the space vacated by Sears, Levy says.

Abandoned retail real estate can be a bonanza for a small company. Earth Treks, a company that operates rock climbing gyms, is looking at shuttered big box retailers for possible additions to its current five locations, which are in Maryland, Virginia and Colorado.