{"id":2135,"date":"2008-07-15T10:05:56","date_gmt":"2008-07-15T14:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2135"},"modified":"2008-07-15T10:05:56","modified_gmt":"2008-07-15T14:05:56","slug":"fall-of-the-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/fall-of-the-mall","title":{"rendered":"Fall of the Mall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s WSJ had a neat article about the bankruptcy of cheap-chic clothing retailer Steve & Barry’s<\/a>. It explores the practice of malls essentially paying S&B’s to open up shop in large, unoccupied spaces. This subsidy tied into the company’s business of “nothing above $9.98”. Sez the Journal<\/em>:<\/p>\n

For mall owners, large anchor spaces, which were once occupied almost exclusively by department stores, are especially important. Their role is to draw lots of shoppers into malls, enabling owners to rent their smaller spaces to specialty stores. When anchor spaces go dark, clauses in the leases of smaller tenants often permit them to pay lower rents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This led the company to go from 31 stores in 2004 to 276 stores by this year. It looks like the company came to rely on the upfront payouts from mall owners, which fueled a rapid expansion in new stores, which fueled a greater need for more upfront payouts (esp. as the economy slowed and sales dropped), which fueled rapider expansion, which. . .<\/p>\n

Well, you can guess what happened; the company went bankrupt a few weeks ago. The story’s a little more complicated, and also touches on the company’s celebrity-branding strategy, including its Sarah Jessica Parker line<\/a>, “Bitten.”<\/p>\n

I found the article pretty compelling, despite the fact that I’d never bought anything in one these stores. Still, I like to try to gain an understanding of how retail works, and sometimes fails to, while also trying to grok what the ebb and flow of different types of stores and product mixes says about us as consumers. For the moment, access to the article is free, so check it out<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s WSJ had a neat article about the bankruptcy of cheap-chic clothing retailer Steve & Barry’s. It explores the practice of malls essentially paying S&B’s to open up shop in large, unoccupied spaces. This subsidy tied into the company’s business of “nothing above $9.98”. Sez the Journal: For mall owners, large anchor spaces, which were … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Fall of the Mall”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","category-suburbs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-yr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":722,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/reading-material","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":0},"title":"Reading material","author":"Gil","date":"November 17, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Neat interview at BusinessWeek about innovative retail achitecture with New Retail author Raul Barraneche: [W]hat interests both the company and the architects involved is the fact that retail spaces are, by nature, building types that allow for innovation. Stores offer quick turnaround times, as opposed to, say, a residence or\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1334,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/mall-crawl","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":1},"title":"Mall crawl","author":"Gil","date":"February 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot of my years were spent in malls. Most of my friends detest malls, or at least profess to, but I embrace them. I enjoy meandering through high-end ones with quirky boutique shops, and I enjoy visiting the occasional Mall of the Living Dead, if only to see how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15316,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-490-alexandra-lange","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":2},"title":"Episode 490 – Alexandra Lange","author":"Gil","date":"June 14, 2022","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 490: Alexandra Lange \"A lot of people try to think about the geography of the mall in the context of the outside. The outside is not important. Ignore the outside and get into the center and work your way out from there.\" With her fantastic new book,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/langecomp.jpg?fit=1102%2C800&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/langecomp.jpg?fit=1102%2C800&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/langecomp.jpg?fit=1102%2C800&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/langecomp.jpg?fit=1102%2C800&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/langecomp.jpg?fit=1102%2C800&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1526,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/style-and-not","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":3},"title":"Style and not","author":"Gil","date":"May 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the weekend, I read a neat article about the differences between Apple stores and Sony Style stores. One of the funniest comments came after the writer noticed the huge disparity in foot traffic (a lot more people were in the Apple store) in the two stores in a Palo\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1256,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-dec-22-2006","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Dec. 22, 2006","author":"Gil","date":"December 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a short Unrequired Reading session this week, since I'm still getting over the year-end issue blowout, and I'm trying to take it easy during this little\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0holiday trip to Louisiana. Here's a neat interview with William T. Bogart on redefining sprawl and tossing out \"planning\": Why is it that we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3366,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/mauled","url_meta":{"origin":2135,"position":5},"title":"Mauled","author":"Gil","date":"February 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There are several awesome things about this NYTimes article about shopping malls: it's written in the second person; it turned me on to deadmalls.com; it is a near-parody of the Times' legendary condescension toward \"flyover\" country, but not near enough; it is completely blind to the ways in which Manhattan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}