Free Republic

NYC Now has a $4.4 billion shoplifting economy. Theft is so rampant, retailers are forced to make tough choices... Cash takes a serious look at stores starting to flee the big apple. The fall of a once great city. And one shining mall in the city is now completely vacant due in most part to shoplifting and violent crime.

Here's a look at what's gone wrong at both chains.. These are tough times for two big US dollar store chains. In the past month, Family Dollar said it will close nearly 1,000 stores and 99 Cents Only said it will go out of business. Both companies said inflation and shoplifting have contributed to their troubles. While inflation has pressured the companies' low-income customer base and shoplifting has squeezed their profits, those factors alone can't explain their difficulties. Years of strategic mistakes and underinvestment have plagued Family Dollar and 99 Cents Only, retail analysts say. Both brands were acquired by...

When in doubt, blame businesses for closing their doors instead of the crime that has made it unsustainable for them to operate. San Francisco might even do you one better: force the businesses to stay open anyway. One of the 11 members of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is floating reviving a vetoed 1984 law that would force grocery stores to stay open against their will. Supervisor Dean Preston calls it a “good idea” because of the risk of “food insecurity” that comes with grocery stores closing. The law in question would require stores to give a whopping six-month notice...

The electronics retailer Best Buy is set to close 10 to 15 stores this year and into early next year, according to an earnings call last week where the CEO blamed declining sales. On the earnings call, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said the company needs “to strike a balance between its workforce and consumer interest,” according to The Austin American-Statesman. The chain closed 24 of its more than 1,000 stores last year. Earlier this month, two Best Buy locations closed – one in Colorado and one in Minnesota.

Participants were asked to audit their own biases and pledge to become allies in service of the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda. A required leadership training program at retail pharmacy giant CVS asks participants to confess their privilege as part of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) action plan, as well as pledge their allyship to various social justice causes, according to documents obtained by The Daily Wire. The training, titled “Creating a DEI Action Plan,” was given last month to employees in the General Management Development Program, an accelerator program that prepares CVS professionals for careers in management....

Unemployment may be low, jobs plentiful, and consumer spending holding up. However, consumers are still struggling with the rising cost of credit card debt, housing, and automobiles—expenses that defy easy solutions. However, managing the cost of groceries and other essentials, the leading expense for half the respondents in a recent TD Bank survey, is just a click or short drive away. As consumers pull back on discretionary spending, major retailers in the grocery business are doubling down on the power of private-label brands to build traffic and loyalty. The boom is on. Amazon, which owns Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh,...

Mission Street is a north-south arterial thoroughfare in San Francisco, California that runs from Daly City's southern border to San Francisco's northeast waterfront , recent street conditions have decimated local businesses large and small from retail pharmacies to restaurants , block after block of vacant store fronts is what mission street has been reduced to. In this video I’m walking the downtown part of the mission, what I found is a transformation of the city no one could have imagined just a few years ago.

Add Macy’s to the long list of Union Square retail stores that have closed recently — the department store announced this week that it would close 150 locations in the coming years, including its flagship store in San Francisco.

Macy’s announced Tuesday it will be closing 150 “underproductive locations” over the next three years as sales dip and the company looks to expand its higher-end luxury brands. The department store chain saw nearly a 2 percent drop in sales during the fourth quarter of last year when compared to its fourth quarter of 2022. In 2023 as a whole, its net sales dropped 5.5 percent and its digital sales dropped 7 percent Macy’s new CEO, Tony Spring, who stepped into the role this month, expressed optimism in a statement accompanying the sales report, which was released Tuesday alongside the...

FBI @FBI Higher prices, dangerous products, and closing businesses. These are just some of the impacts Organized Retail Theft has on everyday Americans. Learn what the #FBI does to combat these crimes on the federal level to protect shoppers across the country: https

KEY POINTS Advance retail sales declined 0.8% for January, down from a 0.4% gain in December and worse than the estimate for a 0.3% drop. Sales at building materials and garden stores were especially weak, sliding 4.1%. Miscellaneous store sales fell 3% and motor vehicle parts and retailers saw a 1.7% decrease. Also, initial claims for unemployment insurance totaled 212,000 for the week ended Feb. 10, a decline of 8,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised total and below the estimate for 220,000.

Retail giant Target recently confirmed it was removing one of its Black History Month products from store shelves after finding out that that product misidentified three civil rights leaders. After historically savvy users pointed out that Target’s Black History Month magnet book mixed up the three civil rights icons, W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington and Carter G. Woodson, the store confirmed the blunder. Target noted it was removing the items from shelves and letting the product’s producers know about the mistake. A TikTok video shared by user Issa Tete on Tuesday pointed out the flaw in the holiday-themed item....

WOKE Democrat Ayanna Pressley Blames Walgreens Closure On RACISM!

The police chief of Oak Brook, Illinois — a western suburb of Chicago — said that "migrant criminal activity is a real problem" after six people were charged with felony burglary and felony theft in connection with two separate incidents at a Macy's on Tuesday. What are the details? The DuPage County State's Attorney's Office on Wednesday said police responded around 1:45 p.m. to a call about retail theft at Macy’s in 1 Oakbrook Center. Officials said it's alleged that Elvis Rodriguez-Rubio, 28, Gabriela Salzar-Vasquez, 30, Victor Sevilla-Arteaga, 33, and Danielis Vasquez-Arteaga, 27 — all of Venezuela and all staying...

A CVS store in Columbia Heights that has been plagued by robberies is closing its doors after struggling with months of near-constant crime that left shelves empty. "We’ve made the difficult decision to close our store at 3031 14th St. NW in Columbia Heights on Feb. 29. All prescriptions will be transferred to the nearby CVS Pharmacy at 1755 Columbia Rd. NW. to ensure patients have uninterrupted access to pharmacy care," said in a statement to FOX 5. Columbia Heights CVS plauged by theft forced to shut down A CVS store in Columbia Heights is shutting down after dealing with...

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit to block the proposed merger between Kroger and Albertsons because of the negative ramifications he says it would have for residents, such as fewer options and higher prices. In the suit, filed on Monday, Ferguson argued that the proposed $24.6 billion merger, announced in October 2022, "will likely substantially lessen supermarket competition or tend to create a monopoly in many Washington communities," where both companies currently compete. This would likely increase prices of food and other grocery products in supermarkets offered to Washington consumers while simultaneously decreasing "the quantity and quality...

“You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization—including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain—without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.” —Thomas Sowell“...Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent...” —Adam SmithI’ve remained silent for a while now, not knowing what to say or how to sort the many threads. Perhaps I’m slow, but I finally had at least a minor “aha” moment. I know it’s all fundamentally about money and power. Isn’t it always? But the salient question...

I've visited hundreds of abandoned places in my life—factories to asylums, schools to churches—but suburban malls might be the most surreal and striking. They captivate the imagination in a way few other types of environments can: with an almost imperceptible layer of fog that forms between the first and second floors of an atrium, endless reflections of vacant storefronts, or a chance encounter with a groundhog in the remains of a food court. Stripped of signage and wares, they are nearly perfectly liminal spaces. Malls have become a part of the modern collective unconscious, through both the haze of half-buried...

Some Target and Walmart stores now locking up underwear as part of shoplifting crackdown. 2:28 VIDEO AT LINK.........................

“They want systemic lawlessness. They want high retail theft,“ says Seneca Scott, founder of Neighbors Together Oakland. It’s ”managed decline from eviction moratoriums, managed decline from defunding police, managed decline from $950 you can steal from stores, not being able to catch people.” “Mega billionaires are giving money to defend the police movements. The same individuals are the largest investors in AI autonomous security,” Mr. Scott said. He has been documenting how Oakland, California became, as he describes it, an “urban hellscape.” Once a progressive Democrat and labor organizer who represented thousands of union workers in California, he says woke...