Offline Retailing Hit Hard by Credit Crunch

I have a feeling that some of the blank faces I was seeing in my audience at Shop.org last September when I mentioned the unthinkable ‘R’ word have finally seen the light. If $100/barrel oil translating to $4/gallon gasoline hasn’t provided the wake up call, then I have a feeling the changing face of offline retailing has. Truth is that gas and food (prices also rising) come first, which means that clothing and furniture merchants are not having the best days.

As the NYTimes points out, “Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies.”

The article lists the following retailers in financial distress, closing stores, or scaling back operations:
Levitz (filed for bankruptcy protection)
The Sharper Image (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Linens n' Things (possibly filing for bankruptcy protection soon)
Foot Locker (FL) (closing 140 stores)
Ann Taylor (ANN) (closing 117 stores)
Zale (ZLC) (closing 100 stores)
Domain (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Wickes (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Fortunoff (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Harvey Electronics (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Lillian Vernon (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Bombay (filed for bankruptcy protection)
J.C. Penney (JCP) (scaling back or delaying expansion)
Lowe’s (LOW) (scaling back or delaying expansion)
Office Depot (ODP) (scaling back or delaying expansion)
Lane Bryant/Fashion Bug (closing 150 stores)
Wilsons the Leather Experts (WLSN) (closing 158 stores)
Pacific Sunwear (PSUN) (shutting down Demo - 153 stores)

Citigroup’s #1 takeaway from ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst Conference points to continued rosy times for online retailing (read full report):

ChannelAdvisor clients not yet seeing macro-economic slowdown
– Biggest surprise to us was the general consensus among the retailers we spoke with that they were not seeing much impact from macro-economic headwinds (…yet?). Consumer spending remains strong in many categories and sellers were confident that their multi-channel strategies can continue to fuel growth.

But I think Mark Mahaney’s comment that the majority of the sellers at the conference are just now expanding beyond eBay (EBAY) explains a lot of this optimism:

Key item to remember here is that most of the retailers who are clients of ChannelAdvisor are primarily eBay sellers and many of them are only just now expanding beyond eBay into other marketplaces (i.e. AMZN (AMZN) or Overstock (OSTK)), comparison shopping, and in early stages of search engine marketing.

Understand that I’m not predicting all doom and gloom regarding online sales. Growth in online sales will still handily beat growth in offline sales. I’m just not expecting the rosy predictions of 17% growth (Forrester) to come in anywhere near on target. There will be plenty of merchants that buck the trend, particularly the savviest online marketers using analytics and expanding to new online marketing channels.