Retail Space Shrinking Again in 2018

Credit Suisse projects a big drop in retail square footage in 2018. The year’s closures tend more toward large square footage stores, meaning total retail square footage will be down sharply, they predict. "As closures skew towards big-box retailers like Toys R US — which announced in March it was shuttering or selling all of its 700 US stores — and Sears — which said in January that it was shutting more than 100 stores," Mamta Badkar reports in the Financial Times (the article is behind a paywall).

While closing brick and mortar retail stores is not a new trend 2018 looks to be different from 2017 in some important ways. "This year they note a shift from so-called soft line retailers, which sell clothing and linen, to hardline stores that typically sell consumer electronics and home furnishings, and more closures at so-called bigger box stores," Badkar reports.