Victoria's Secret To Close 53 Stores in 2019 As Global Auto Sales Also Drop In Major Spending Shifts

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Victoria's Secret To Close 53 Stores in 2019 As Global Auto Sales Also Drop In Major Spending Shifts

American teenagers no longer hang out at the mall like generations past. Their lives are far more complex and demanding; then add in the high priority of digital culture and online shopping in their lives. Their fashion fav brands often aren’t even sold in America’s shopping malls.

Last week was a brutal one for American retailers. L Brands made the decision to close 53 Victoria’s Secret stores in North America. Gap Inc. announced that it will close 230 stores in the next two years. J.C. Penney weighed in with 18 new department store closures. Earlier in February Payless announced the closure of 2,500 in America.

It’s not all bad news. Planet Fitness Chief Executive officer Chris Rondeau said his business is immune to e-commerce’s effects on brick-and-mortar, making it a good mall tenant, writes Business of Fashion.

“Our business can’t be Amazoned. We’re un-Amazonable,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “We do about 5,000 workouts per gym per week, about 8 million workouts a week in the U.S., so look at how much traffic we drive to these centers every day. And the majority of those visits are Monday through Wednesday; most retailers are busy on the weekends, so we’re a great co-tenant for these retailers to drive that traffic.”