Trade Show Guru

I’m not a fan of gift cards, but I understand why businesses like to sell them. They get the money when the card is sold, but then don’t have to provide the product or service until the card is used. I’m going to guess that a significant portion of gift cards are never used, or or partially used and then lost before the balance is spent. Some businesses even start deducting a percentage of the balance from the card if it isn’t used by a certain date. We have several gift cards around here for places we seldom shop, and I don’t know which ones have what amount of money on them. Arrggg. If you ever want to give me a gift, there is nothing wrong with hard, cold cash. 🙂

Anyway, I just received a forwarded email warning about the following stores closing,  and recommending that if you have a gift card at one of them, you’ll want to use it before your local store disappears. Some businesses are just closing some of their stores. Some businesses are going under and are closing all of their stores. On the bright side, if you go shopping at any of these stores, you’ll probably get some good “store closing / going out of business” discounts, though the selection will obviously be picked over and limited.

More to the point, I think the following list is very sobering. It points out our current economic situation, and the economic challenges ahead.
Without further ado:

Ann Taylor – closing 117 stores

Bombay – going out of business, closing all stores

Cache – going out of business, closing all stores [1/8/09 incorrect, see comments below]

Circuit City – closing 155 stores, will the company survive? See the end of this post.  [1/20/09 update: Circuit City is going out of business]

Disney – closing 98 stores, more after January

Eddie Bauer – closing 27 stores, more after January

Ethan Allen – closing 12 stores

Footlocker – closing 140 stores, more after January

Home Depot – closing 15 stores

GAP – closing 85 stores

J.Jill – going out of business, closing all stores [incorrect, see update below]

K B Toys – closing 356 stores [1/20/09 update: our local KB Toys store is gone, as are all KB Toys stores in California it appears]

Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherines – closing 150 stores

Levitz – going out of business, closing all stores

Linens and Things – going out of business, closing all stores

Macys – closing 9 stores

Movie Galley – going out of business, closing all stores [update – Movie Gallery closed 160 stores as part of reorganization plan to exit bankruptcy. The video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental chain closed last fall.]

Pacific Sunware – going out of business, closing all stores [1/8/09 incorrect, see comments below]

Pep Boys – closing 33 stores

Piercing Pagoda – going out of business, closing all stores

Sharper Image – going out of business, closing all stores

Sprint/ Nextel – closing 133 stores

Talbots – going out of business, closing all stores UPDATE – From Maureen’s comment below:”Talbots is not closing all their stores, they have closed their men’s and children’s clothing stores, but NOT the woman’s.” I have also read that “Talbots announced on Nov. 6 that it will try to it’s troubled J. Jill division”.

Whitehall Jewelers – going out of business, closing all stores

Wickes Furniture – going out of business, closing all stores

Wilson Leather – going out of business, closing all stores

Zales – closing 82 stores, 105 after January

“Going out of business” may mean just that, or it may mean that the business is closing its brick and mortar retail business, but may try to keep a online retail presence. I haven’t had a chance to fully verify the above list. Let me know if you see any errors.

RT, a friend of the trade show guru and the Master of the Philippines recently wrote a post on Circuit City closing stores titled Goodbye, Circuit City, and Good Riddance . Perhaps I should change his name to RT, the Crotchety Master of the Philippines?

UPDATE (Nov 22) -Based on a comment below by Laurie, I looked into the above list a bit more. As I said in my post, I hadn’t verified the whole list. It turns out that part of it is wrong, but some of it is definately right. The incorrect information that I have found at this point is that J.Jill is not going out of business. Per the J.Jill website: “We DO NOT plan to close all of our stores.” The reader may note that J.Jill says “all” and not “any”, and that in addition the parent company Talbots announced on Nov. 6 that it will try to it’s troubled J. Jill division.

LIn has written a much better post Store Closings – Do Not Buy Gift Cards From Closing Retail Stores, in which she suggests an open loop gift card (provided by a bank and not tied to any specific store), and also links to news reports for each of the stores or businesses closing stories. She obviously put a lot of effort into her post and I recommend you read it.