3 ms·
I think you’ve reinvented the mall.
by frumper 3y ago
I think you’ve reinvented the mall.
- dragonwriter 3y agoSeems the difference is a mall requires checkout at each “department”, Walmart only once. (Also can be cheaper because of economies of scale, though this can adversely effect convenience—you don’t have to man every department at all times a WalMart is open.)
- frumper 3y agoYou've now re-invented the mall killer.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoTBH loitering killed malls more than a centralized checkout. They became one of the few places for teens to hangout and teens don't have much money. No coincidence that the remaining malls tend to be in high income areas. But I digress. The removal of hangout spots in the country (especially post pandemic) can be its own topic.
- frumper 3y agoExcept that doesn’t make sense. Malls were teen hangouts for 2 decades and thrived. What killed our mall was that all the anchor stores were getting killed by Walmart and target.
- mbg721 3y agoThe areas that were "high-income" (cheap for white commuters aspiring to the upper-middle-class) a generation before got more and more developed, and at some point in trying to attain big-city convenience, gained the big-city problems they were trying to avoid.
- frumper 3y agoOur mall lost 2 major department stores when we got a Walmart and target. They lost 2 more after Amazon got big. The target and Costco a few blocks away are thriving with the affluent families. The mall isn’t economically competitive anymore.
- mbg721 3y agoThere are malls that are competitive...one near me survived by anchoring itself to a Nordstrom's and then aiming higher. But that isn't "the mall".