Talk:Retail apocalypse/Archive 1

Archive 1

2016 Bankruptcies

Stores like The Sports Authority that went out of business in 2016 should be included as well. Also, what about A&P, which went out in 2015 after 156 years in business?

Thanks,

Lionsdude148

Did it. Good lookin' out. (Heroeswithmetaphors) talk 17:12, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Title

Maybe something like "2017 retail crisis" would be more appropriate for an encyclopedia article? See for comparison Financial crisis of 2007–2008. The popular media term could still be referenced in the article, of course. Bri (talk) 15:00, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to simply use the existing title under WP:Common names? Yes, it is an encyclopedia, but there's no need to overly formalize things if there is already an existing term in use. The "retail apocalypse" has become a commonly accepted term to refer to this phenomenon, so I think it would work best as the article title. ProfessorTofty (talk) 19:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

The article title is fine as is. Get on with it. (Heroeswithmetaphors) talk 19:09, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

The term has been widely used in the media (Although I think "shopocalyspe" would be even catchier, but I seem to be a minority). Daniel Case (talk) 18:43, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

The current title has been widely used in many media sources, and "2017 retail crisis"would no doubt need further revision as this phenomenon continues in coming years.
Indeed, large scale store closures began well before 2017. (Heroeswithmetaphors) talk 17:15, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Affected retailers

The "Affected retailers" section lists various retail store closings between two dates. This assumes that all retail closings in that time period are part of the vaguely defined "retail apocalypse" caused by: middle class squeeze, the shift to online retail and/or other factors.

Let's suppose I ran a grocery store. I was thinking of retiring, the apartment complex next door was condemned, the health inspector was writing up the massive rat infestation in my cereal aisle and, right at that moment, my uninsured roof collapsed, destroying all of my uninsured inventory. Oh, and it all happened during the shift to online retail. While dramatic, my store's closure had nothing whatsoever to do with the retail apocalypse. It had everything to do with regular day-to-day events that cause stores to close.

By providing an indiscriminate list of some randomly selected store closings during the time frame, we are saying that these stores closed because of the retail apocalypse. Yes, some of them were outright replaced by Amazon. Others were impacted to a degree. Still others may have benefited from the shifts, but closed due to other factors.

We need independent reliable sources for each of these purported examples which directly state the closings are due to the retail apocalypse. - SummerPhD^v2.0 19:06, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

"Retail apocalypse"

I've replaced the "bettersource" tag on hangthebankers.com (identifying the issue as WP:SPS) with the more specific "Self-published inline". Why we are using a blog as a source is beyond me. Reviewing the history, this blog is the source for the new 2013 date, replacing the 2014 date. 2014 had cited a source that was reliable, but did not discuss the "retail apocalypse". That source had been used to replace the 2015 date, which cited the far-right fringe WorldNetDaily (which is not a reliable source for anything).

Though I haven't touched it yet, the next source (cited for "and expected to peak in 2018") does not say "retail apocalypse", much less claim that it is expect to peak in 2018. It does say that the analysts cited expect there to be more closings in 2018 than there were in 2017. "Peaking" implies that 2018 will be the turning point -- that 2019 will be better. I do not see anyone making that projection.

Essentially, I think this article is seriously misguided, trying to hang one handy label on various trends that happen to be running concurrently. Various sources are discussing various unrelated trends: the growth of online retail at the expense of brick-and-mortar retail, the end of the explosive growth of malls (and some contraction following that), failed LBOs, fashion trends, etc. Some of the sources are combining them and calling the closures and bankruptcies the "retail apocalypse". Most are not.

Had a handful of historians conflated WWI combat deaths with flu pandemic deaths and called it the "young male apocalypse", it would be a morbid curiosity. We would not, however, assume that every male age 20-40 who died in 1918 was a victim of the "young male apocalypse". There were certainly deaths that year for all of the other causes that typically cause deaths (accidents, other diseases, suicides, murders, etc.).

The more I look at the sources here, the more I'm thinking we have a neologism here. As time permits, I'll look through and tag bad sources and/or sources that don't address the topic. At some point, I expect to reach a tipping point. I expect one of three outcomes:

• replace some bad sources and perhaps tighten up the text to clarify what is happening
• strip away a lot of bad sources and off-topic material (e.g. any suggestion that the supermarket chain (A&P) started having problems in 2013 or so and lost business due to online retail) and wind up with a much smaller article
• find there really isn't one coherent topic here and suggest deletion in some form. - SummerPhD^v2.0 03:50, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree that the term "Retail apocalypse" is probably a neologism. I further agree that the article has problems with its definition of the term in the opening paragraph. "Retail apocalypse" certainly was not a term in use at all 5+ years ago, and it still is not in common use in business media. Therefore, finding a reliable source calling many of these chains victims of a retail apocalypse is unlikely. However, I do think the subject is worthy of a Wikipedia article, due to its substantial economic impacts. I think a more nuanced approach is necessary than what you have done to the article in recent days. You didn't find a sufficient source for Claire's using the term "Retail Apocalypse", and removed them from the list of affected retailers. But if the "retail apocalypse" is a real phenomenon, then stores like Claire's are surely victims, due to all of the threads of the "apocalypse" coming together to affect them (LBO, changing fashion tastes, online shopping, declining mall traffic). I just don't know how to write such an article without violating WP's original research guidelines. The right solution might be to write an article about a more clearly defined subject, like "retail bankruptcies", as suggested by user Bri further up the talk page. DonutLover (talk) 01:05, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Much like the retailers discussed in the article, we have several problems. The big one is that the article must discuss a subject -- one topic that independent reliable sources discuss in some detail.

A source discussing an increase in brick-and-mortar stores closing due to customers turning to online does not belong in an article that also discusses what was essentially a failed restructuring of a grocery chain unless the sources discuss both of them as part of the same phenomenon and the article is about that phenomenon. This article currently tries to tie all of them together under the title "retail apocalypse", but then uses sources which do not use that title.

A list of examples here would need objective, sourced inclusion criteria. One easy one is: Blue link notable companies that independent reliable sources say were victims of the "retail apocalypse". So far, that one seems to leave very few examples. Any other possibility seems to raise too many problems: Yes, we can certainly have a list of 2017 retail bankruptcies, but that is clearly not what this article is meant to discuss, including as it does retailers that did not file for bankruptcy in 2017. We can't very well take various threads of what some sources say are some of the causes (online, changes in fashion, failed LBOs, etc.) and include any businesses whose bankruptcies were caused in part by one or more of them in a time frame suggested by other sources. We cannot simply frankenstein together criteria.

I haven't fully dug in yet, but I get the strong impression that this article will end up going one of two ways: A substantial shortening with a handful of examples discussing that numerous unrelated factors happen to have crossed paths creating a large uptick in store closings that some have called the "retail apocalypse" - or - Deletion. Unless a whole lot of sources materialize, we're essentially left with these two options or the equivalent of discussing every death in 1918 to see if we think it was a run-of-the-mill death or part of the "young male apocalypse". - SummerPhD^v2.0 03:03, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Draft of new child article: List of retailers affected by the retail apocalypse

I've pasted the list of affected retailers into a new draft article Draft:List of retailers affected by the retail apocalypse. Once it is approved, I'll trim the list of examples in this article to three into the form of a prose paragraph, and link to the full list using the "Main list" template. The list is culturally significant due to the large role that retail has played in U.S. society. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michaelmalak (talk • contribs) 16:40, March 25, 2018 (UTC)

Please see the section immediately above this. We don't seem to have reliable sources saying these are part of the "retail apocalypse", rather than merely a list of stores that have closed between since an unsourced date in the past. - SummerPhD^v2.0 21:30, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Then we should require for each entry citations that state "retail apocalypse" (and flag those with CN that do not meet the criteria)

I've just finished with the A's. The sources for 9 of the 10 do not attribute the stores' closings to the retail apocalypse. The 10th one was a dead link -- for the supermarket chain whose problems are unlikely to be rooted in online retail taking over. I strongly suspect the rest of the list wil be similar. Until this is sorted out, I think spinning off the list to a daughter article would be premature. - SummerPhD^v2.0 23:45, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Pinging past participants SummerPhDv2.0, Michaelmalak I have reviewed and approved the draft for the list. I linked it from this article and removed the content from this article — based on this discussion it seems the intention was to spinout and continue discussion at the new article. SeraphWiki (talk) 02:29, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

@SummerPhDv2.0: Sorry, I see now your comment I think spinning off the list to a daughter article would be premature — obviously, no AfC reviewer can make that decision on their own, and it was submitted as a draft, so it is up to other editors to decide whether to send this article or the list to AfD or move them to new titles.SeraphWiki (talk) 02:34, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I've started looking at the sources in the new article. It's not promising. - SummerPhD^v2.0 02:45, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I see there is some discussion below about moving the article and this seems to be more a question of terminology than whether the subject is notable. I see editors below also expressing they believe there is a notable topic here. I think moving it to something like Brick and mortar retail decline or 2017 retail crisis (which Bri suggested above should be fairly straightforward and will alleviate some of the concerns about the sourcing. I agree that it would be better to avoid using a neologism in the article title. The question of whether the list should be merged back in would I think come after a consensus is reached about the article title. SeraphWiki (talk) 02:58, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Article mentioned in press

See [1]  — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  05:21, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Unaffected retailers

By what criteria should these be mentioned at all? If all retailers were affected, the article could easily say that. It doesn't, and the existence of unaffected retailers needs no lengthy demonstration beyond that. The section just encourages the addition of off-topic list cruft to the article, especially by editors who might have conflicts of interest. 24.7.14.87 (talk) 02:01, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

on the other hand mentioning Sears and Kmart as just victims of the retail apocalypse seems questionable considering that Eddie Lampert drove both businesses into the ground on his own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.72.40.86 (talk) 03:53, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Retailer list

re: section - Major retail bankruptcies 2011 - 2021 (sample) - maybe not the best title, but Retailers alone didn't describe anything. I tried to update the list of store closing numbers and make it more uniform, but some were pretty elusive. Someone else might find more specific research on some of those.2604:2000:9FC0:1:D9D3:BD01:BDC5:9C8F (talk) 22:08, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Affected Retailers

I can understand having a separate page describing how stores were affected in a bit more detail but my question is: Why are the stores on that page at least not listed on this page on the table? Is the point of that table just to showcase examples of some of the stores? Sanchoco (talk) 01:27, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey. I think it's just to have a more reader-friendly example of some major players (ex-players?) and the long lists are more for collecting a comprehensive list. This is more about general history and impact, with examples. 2604:2000:9FC0:1:D9D3:BD01:BDC5:9C8F (talk) 22:15, 24 August 2022 (UTC)