>My favorite conspiracy theory (which I totally believe) is that mattress stores are mostly for money laundering. No market can possibly support as many stores

>My favorite conspiracy theory (which I totally believe) is that mattress stores are mostly for money laundering. No market can possibly support as many stores as there are, and every time I go by one, they're empty. Here's more fuel for that fire. If you look at Sears in the last 10 years, the number of shoppers seemed to dwindle and getting smaller and smaller. Except for a spots in each store, there wouldn't be many shoppers at all. So the economics don't make sense...and then bam they're going bankrupt. Now look at rug stores; there are a few of them where I live (Toronto, Canada) and every single one, without fail, has very few customers and has a sale on. Usually it's "inventory clearance" or "going out of business" or whatever. But they just continue to sit there. There are a lot of industries and niches in industries where the economics do not make sense on the surface but I suspect there's some perverse set of incentives that make it possible. Maybe some weird tax loophole, or some kind of government loan or grant, or some weird combination of laws (or lack of laws and regulation) that make it possible. Embrace the weirdness?