What retail meltdown?
While department and chain stores have been suffering since even before the pandemic, discount retailers — including Five Below, HomeGoods, TJ Maxx and Dollar General — are ramping up to open more stores in the next few months.
TJX, the parent company of TJ Maxx and Marshalls, will open 81 stores across its brands in 2021, Business Insider reported. It has big plans in particular for HomeGoods, with plans to grow its store count from 821 to 1,500 in future years.
Dollar stores have also performed well during the pandemic. Dollar Tree created 79 new stores and renovated 106, and plans to add a whopping 600 stores in 2021, according to the report. Sales are up 7.2 percent from last year.
Dollar General, which focuses on rural markets, added 1,000 stores in 2020 and plans to open another 1,051 stores in 2021. The brand’s third quarter sales were up 17 percent from the previous year.
And Five Below plans to add as many as 180 new stores across the U.S. this year. Its net sales rose 21.1 percent during the holiday season.
Still, a retail bloodbath is coming in 2021: A recent report projected that as many as 10,000 stores may close this year. Larger retailers, particularly those that anchored shopping centers, are among those in harm’s way: Macy’s, for instance, is planning to close 45 stores this year.
[BusinessInsider] — Keith Larsen