More than five retail chains are opening stores for every retailer that is closing stores in 2019, according to new research from IHL Group. This is up from 3.7 in 2018. The company also reports that the number of chains adding stores in 2019 has increased 56%, while the number of closing stores has decreased by 66% in the last year. The report, “Retail Renaissance – True Story of Store Openings/Closings” reviewed 1,660 retail chains with 50 or more locations in the U.S. across nine industry segments.
“U.S. retail has increased $565 billion in sales since January of 2017, fed not just by online sales growth but net store sales growth,” said Lee Holman, VP of Research for IHL Group. “Clearly there is significant pressure in apparel and department stores, however, in every single retail segment there are more chains that are expanding their number of stores than closing stores.”
Since 2017, apparel and department store chains have seen the net closure of 9,651 stores. During this same period, all other segments represented 18,226 net new openings. Additional findings include the following: 64% of retailers are increasing the number of stores in 2019, 12% are decreasing and 24% report no change in store counts. This compares to 2018 with 41% increasing store counts, 37% decreasing and 22% with no change.