But it's better than it was.". They're hoping it's money well spent, because even a company that has expenditures of $11 billion a year only has so much money to go around. Walmart has notoriously been shipping in many products from overseas for years, and in 2018, the U.S. government and President Donald Trump leveled a ton of tariffs on goods coming into the country from China. Comments from Walmart's US CEO, Greg Foran, seem to suggest that not all is well within the corporate giant. This phenomenon, known as cannibalization, repeats itself across in several areas that Walmart operates in, including Louisiana. But according to the Business Journal, they haven't been reliable performers at all. Their supply costs had risen by 3.2 percent, and that had, in turn, dragged their profits down severely. Walmart went on to say that they're going to be focusing on other innovations and improvements to the brand, with a focus on those meant to be time- and money-saving. And by February, the Washington Examiner was reporting that when it came to these increased fees, Walmart had chosen to absorb as much of the costs as they could, instead of passing it on to the consumer. It's no secret that the political landscape of the entire world is, well, chaotic. No one wants a grumpy boss, especially when Foran went on to list all the problems he was seeing time and time again. "I'd say we're at about 50 percent of where we should be," Foran said. In 2016, they announced (via CNBC) that they would be closing 269 stores worldwide — a move that impacted the jobs of around 16,000 people. "I get out to stores every single week. But during that same time period, they also closed 130 of the relatively new stores. About half the time I'm OK with it, and the other half I'm grumpy.". According to Yahoo! They're also partnering with other giant corporations like Advance Auto Parts and MGM, and the ultimate goal is to be able to offer online shoppers a wider range of better-quality merchandise. This may be partly why Foran was replaced later that year by John Furner (via CNBC) — but he makes a fair point. According to Investor's Business Daily, Walmart fired their first serious shots at Amazon in 2016 with the acquisition of Jet.com and the major establishment of their online presence. In its annual report for 2018, Walmart said that it's US arm "competes with both physical retailers operating discount, department, retail and wholesale grocers, drug, dollar, variety and specialty stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets and Supercenter-type stores, and digital retailers, as well as catalog businesses." "I still go into stores and the wet wall — leafy greens — quality isn't good ... they're not rotating the merchandise. It's probably mostly the latter, and according to Forbes, Walmart's cutthroat image has been a major problem for them. Another huge problem was freshness. It's being felt by everyone, and that includes Walmart. "I'd say we're at about 50% of where we should be," former Walmart US CEO Greg Foran said in 2019. For a long time, Walmart seemed like the unstoppable juggernaut of the retail world. Those days are gone, and now, they're not focusing so much on the supercenters like the one slated for closing in 2019. Even as they were shifting their focus from brick-and-mortar stores to e-commerce, they were trying new formats to see what would strike a chord with consumers and get them coming into the stores. Add to his comments the stiff competition it faces from smaller, leaner operations like Aldi, and we may have a clearer picture of why Walmart has decided to close as many as 154 stores in the US, and 269 stores globally. And why on earth would anyone choose to shop at a place with a reputation like that, especially when there are so many other choices? Three years prior — when they announced an even larger series of closings — they were at what Retail Dive called "a cross-roads." Walmart began testing the concept in 2011 and rebranded those outlets as Neighborhood Market stores in 2014. The report also warned that the company needs to grow its online business and integrate other digital platforms. There's a very telling thing happening at Walmart, and it's not just about how many stores they're closing — it's about how few stores they're opening, too. Lincoln, Ill. , Mason, Ohio , Williston, N.D ., El Paso, Texas , and Franklin, Ky. , have all been shut down for over 40 hours within the last few weeks. Walmart has been making steps toward increasing the quality and selection of their fresh foods and private-label brands, but Foran says they're nowhere near where they want to be. It showed an almost complete overlap of potential customers, so the decision shoppers needed to make was not whether or not to go to Walmart, but which one to go to. There was a time not too long ago that Walmart was pretty much the same no matter where customers were. "I get out to stores every single week. The Silicon Valley Business Journal says Walmart may still be experimenting with its "small format," Neighborhood Market stores, because while it opened about 676 of these new stores from 4014 to 2018, it also had to shut down 130 of them in the same timeframe, because they were performing poorly. In fact, Walmart has a ton of image problems: sure, they're known for low prices, but they're also known for leaning on small retailers, dirty, messy, and disorganized stores, poor customer service, a complete lack of training for employees, and management — from store managers to high-level executives — that are just completely out of touch with the idea that they need customers, and they need to relate to them. It's a bit ironic, too: Amazon is often touted as being the low-price, uber-convenient, one-stop-shop that Walmart once was, and now that Walmart is trying to play catch-up with them... the tables have turned. L Brands hasn’t said how many Canadian stores will close, but only 23 currently remain. Way back in ye olden days of 2016, Walmart said (via CNBC) they were planing to focus on their new Neighborhood Market format. "Fresh has been a big deal, and we haven't even got close to arriving on fresh. Walmart Express stores had been rolling out in urban markets in 2011, and were gone by 2014. Here's Why Walmart Is Closing Down Stores. Even giants can stumble, and this seems to be the case with Walmart, and as Retail Dive points out, its stores are no longer "the best deal in town," thanks to competition from the likes of Amazon in the e-commerce universe, and potentially from dollar stores in the brick-and-mortar world. And by the end of 2018, Business Insider was calling Walmart's shift from opening more and more supercenters to beefing up their online presence an inevitable shift in their business model, one that was needed if they want to stay relevant. Finance, Walmart had more than 3,500 supercenters in the U.S. market as of early 2019. But, even as vaccination rates rise and other grocery chains end pandemic-era rules, Walmart is still closing some stores to sanitize. You know things aren't looking good when your boss says half of his site visits makes him touchy. Or is it more of a dirty little secret, with customers that sort of run in, get what they need, and run out? Foran has a list of what he's unhappy about, including customer service, assortment, inventory levels, and product offer. As an example, Placer.AI talks about a Walmart Supercenter in Dallas, Texas, which was operating at normal levels and was considered to have better than average foot traffic. Data analytics firm Placer may have the answer to Walmart's closures — and it has nothing to do with operating in a hostile consumer environment and everything to do with having to compete against itself. About half the time I'm ok with it, and the other half I'm grumpy" (via Business Insider). But it's better than it was." If you've gone into Walmart recently and not found what you're looking for, you're not alone. Business Insider says the shift in focus isn't unexpected, and there's another simple reason for their shift in focus, their slow growth, and their closings: they've simply opened as many stores as is financially viable, and the U.S. just doesn't need more Walmarts and Walmart off-shoots. Simply put, Walmart is trying to figure out what consumers want, and when they fail, they're not afraid to pull the plug, cut their losses, and move on. Experts say that Walmart hasn't been great at figuring out just how much they need to keep in stock to satisfy online sales and orders, and at the same time, they're slipping a bit with what they're offering in-store, too. They had almost everything you could possibly want, all in one place, and all for prices you just couldn't beat. The Real Reason Walmart Is Closing Down Stores. Neil Saunders, who heads a retail research firm, tells CNBC that "It is notable that Walmart has opted to shutter all 102 of what was once called its Express format stores. And then there's the elephant in the room: Amazon. As much as people claimed to hate them, those same people couldn't help but shop there. By 2013, they had 286 stores, and over the course of the next four years, they had opened 676 more of them. According to Reuters, the 2018 holiday period wasn't a good time for Walmart — and that's a critical time of the year for any retailer, big or small. After culling 10 Canadian stores and more than 200 in the U.S. last year, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret recently announced that it plans to close another 30 to 50 in North America. And there were a few reasons for that. Share prices dropped a whopping 9.4 percent, and while sales were up, they weren't up nearly as much as they had been in previous years, and not nearly as much as the sales of one of their biggest competitors, Amazon. Nope. Let's ask this: do you know anyone who's proud to shop at Walmart? When they issued statements on each individual closing, there was one line that stood out: "The decision is based on several factors including the store's overall performance.". The new stores would be located in their most lucrative markets. Official statements suggest those stores closed because of poor performance, and according to Walmart's official stance on the 2019 closings, that became a huge factor again. But if that was supposed to be the point of the smaller stores in the first place, what went wrong? "Fresh has been a big deal, and we haven't even got close to arriving on fresh," Foran expained. Walmart Canada is closing six stores and spending $500 million to upgrade more than half its remaining locations in a bid to improve the "look and feel" of its stores … There's a very telling thing happening at Walmart, and it's not just about how many stores they're closing — it's about how few stores they're opening, too. Finance, Walmart had more than 3,500 supercenters in the U.S. market as of early 2019. In its annual report for 2018, Walmart said that it's US arm "competes with both physical retailers operating discount, department, retail and wholesale grocers, drug, dollar, variety and specialty stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets and Supercenter-type stores, and digital retailers, as well as catalog businesses." Starting on January 1, 2019, CNBC reported that duties would rise to 25 percent on products — and that's been crippling not only Walmart, but hundreds of businesses who have appealed to the government not to make the move. These smaller stores were designed to be exactly that — smaller — to compete with the likes of Trader Joe's and other small-format neighborhood stores. Walmart warned government officials that the decision was going to hurt America's consumers in the end, raising the prices they were going to need to pay for countless necessities imported from China. That includes things like offering free shipping and mobile returns, and that's a huge deal. But fast forward to 2019, and word got out (via Business Insider) that Walmart would be closing nine more stores in the U.S. Those stores were the same Neighborhood Markets and Supercenters they were focusing on expanding just three years prior... so what gives? They might be holding their own, but according to what CEO Doug McMillon told Business Insider in early 2018, the slowdown they were seeing in their profits as they switched gears from brick-and-mortar stores to an online shopping presence was "planned and expected.". The idea was that they were going to be shifting their focus to Neighborhood Markets and Supercenters — though they were also closing some of those stores in over-saturated markets. The includes things like rolling out their grocery pickup program, and a grocery delivery service. Rather than opening new stores, Walmart plans on overhauling — or closing — stores that were already open. But there were also the higher costs Walmart incurred trying to make themselves as appealing as Amazon is. In the early days of March 2019 — not long before the closings were announced — Business Insider was reporting on some pretty harsh comments Foran made at the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference. While this store type is aligned with the trend of shopping more locally, it has faced stiff competition from the rise and rapid growth of dollar stores.". But a stumble could be just what the doctor ordered if Walmart can prove itself to be agile and learn from its mistakes. One of the biggest is Flipkart — another e-commerce company — as well as companies like Bare Necessities and Eloquii. Because it was in an area with two other Walmart Supercenters, it wasn't competing with other stores for competition. But all that costs money, and experts say the money that's getting poured into their online presence is just money that's not going toward their profits or their brick-and-mortar stores. And that hurt their bottom line, something that causes a ripple effect seen across the brand. Neighborhood Markets took their place, and when they struggled, they went the way of the dodo, too. Business Journal says it seems like Walmart is still tweaking the format of the stores so they can hit on something that resonates with people, but is that all that's going on? Stores closing in 2021: Up to 23. But at the same time, they were pushing the little guys out of business... and that just didn't sit well with many. According to Yahoo! In today's online world, something has to give — and unfortunately, it's coming at the cost of physical locations — and the jobs that go with them. Those were things like poor customer service, low stock and inventory levels, and nowhere near the varied assortment he wanted. Walmart has been struggling in the face of numerous foes coming from all directions, and even as they're struggling to keep increasing profits as they'd like, they're also trimming back on their projections for just how much profit they're expecting to see in 2019. Many of the closures in the country involve Walmart's Express format stores. While they filled the aisles with holiday merchandise from decorations to electronics and gift items, they slipped on their everyday sorts of merchandise — you know, the stuff a lot of people go to Walmart to find. That's important, because it puts it into stark focus just how few new stores were being opened: 15 in 2018, and 10 in 2019. According to CNBC, part of that bottom line is going toward acquiring new brands and technologies. 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