Thanks to offshore manufacturing and the Walmartification of America, millions of American shoppers feel they have a right to pay less. The American shopper also wants to do less to pay less. After all, getting dressed and driving to a retail store where human interactions are the norm, is so last century.
Seriously, why bother to go shopping (in the physical realm), when you can order just about anything your heart desires from Jeff Bezos and have it delivered to your door in a day or two?
Payless Shoes Kicked to the Curb
Payless ShoeSource is shuttering all of its 2,100 remaining stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, joining a list of iconic names like Toys R Us and Bon-Ton that have closed down in the last year.
The Topeka, Kansas-based chain said Friday it will hold liquidation sales starting Sunday and wind down its e-commerce operations.
In related news, Payless recently pulled a prank on unsuspecting and totally gullable fashion influencers.
The discount retailer recently took over a former Armani store in Los Angeles, stocked the shelves with its shoes and invited guests to what they believed was the launch party for a new high-end label,
The fake store reportedly rung up more than $3,000 in sales in its first few hours.
The First Cut Is Not the Deepest
According to a report by
Can’t Cry In Your Beer
The closings are not limited to fashion. Craft breweries are also closing at an accelerated pace. According to The Oregonian,
The company cited an “extremely competitive craft beer market” in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest for its decision to shut the operation down. Burnside Brewing, also in Portland, also closed shop this year.
Brewbound notes that an increase in brewery closures is a natural outcome of the industry’s growth. With nearly 7,000 craft beer companies in operation, a certain percentage are bound to fail.
