Creating Holiday Magic: Investing in Spaces for Connection and Celebration
By: Mike Jordan and Julee Zack
In this edition of Insights on the Margin, Mike Jordan, Director of Research and Julee Zack, Vice President of Marketing, explore the trends in holiday retail foot traffic and the innovative activation strategies that elevate our tenants and their customers experience at our centers across the country during the holiday season. The goal is to not only boost foot traffic and sales, but to foster a genuine sense of joy and community that shoppers will remember long after the season has ended and keep them coming back year after year. By transforming our properties into vibrant gathering places during the most festive time of year, we don’t just celebrate the season—we strengthen connections, drive tenant success, and enhance the shopping experience for everyone!
Happy Holidays from all of us at Big V Property Group!
NRF estimates 197 million shoppers made purchases between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, 14 million more than last year
This includes 126 million shoppers who made purchases in physical stores Read More >>
Online sales hit $41 billion over the weekend, though Cyber Monday still reigns as biggest e-commerce shopping day with $13 billion in sales Read More >>
Both indoor and open-air shopping centers saw traffic increase in November Read More >>
Judge Blocks Kroger/Albertsons Merger
The $25 billion bid by Kroger would have been the largest retail takeover in history
First proposed in 2022, a Federal judge in Oregon noted that the two companies “engage in substantial competition” that would lead to harm consumers Read More >>
Albertsons sues Kroger to recover costs incurred with the merger Read More >>
The Checkout Lane
Source: Retail Dive, Chain Store Age, RetailStat
Aldi is gearing up for an expansion and renovation of its U.S. headquarters in Batavia, IL. The growth in footprint comes on the heels of the grocer’s commitment to open 800 new stores by 2028.
The Container Store will soon be delisted on the New York Stock Exchange. The company has failed to meet the requirement to maintain a market capitalization above $15 million for a 30 day period. The move comes after Beyond, Inc. has pulled out of its planned $40 million investment in the brand and puts the retailer in significant jeopardy of filing for bankruptcy and possible liquidation.
Dollar Tree is looking to fill two C-suite positions following the announcement that CFO Jeff Davis plans to step down from his role in March 2025. Former CEO Rick Dreiling resigned last month due to health concerns. While the company has continued to explore a possible sale of its struggling Family Dollar banner, they also noted an improved financial performance thanks to new store openings, led by the conversion of over 150 locations from now-defunct retailer 99 Cents Only.
Five Below named retail veteran Winnie Park as its new CEO effective this month. Park had been CEO of Forever 21 since 2022 and had been CEO of Paper Source before that, she will also assume a spot on the Board of Directors. The company raised its full year net sales guidance by $90 million following a strong Black Friday weekend.
Gymboree is returning to malls as parent company Children’s Place has opened a new store at Garden Place Mall in Paramus, NJ, the first since acquiring the brand out of bankruptcy in 2019. Children’s Place is in the middle of a strategic overhaul that will see the company place more emphasis on its brick and mortar locations, while relying less on e-commerce.
Kohl’s will be getting new leadership in 2025 as former Michaels CEO Ashley Buchanan takes over for retail veteran Tom Kingsbury who is stepping down after admitting that many of Kohl’s turnaround plans have failed. While the company has not released any details about closing stores, CFO Jill Timm recently noted that 10% of its store fleet (~118 stores) is now unprofitable, a stark contrast to 18 months ago when Kingsbury noted that all stores were profitable.
Macy’s is facing renewed pressure from activist investors. Barington Capital and Thor Equities are demanding that the company commit to a plan that would see them cut expenses by more than half, while raising capital by exploring sales of Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury. The firms also want Macy’s to create a subsidiary tasked with maximizing returns on its real estate. The activists point to the strategy at Dillard’s to return a greater portion of its cumulative cash to investors as precedent for Macy’s to take action.
Ollie’s Bargain Outlet has been on an explosive growth trajectory that shows no signs of slowing down. The company opened a record 24 new stores in its most recent quarter, over half of which are former Big Lots stores won at auction. Ollie’s plans to continue its expansion with 7 more Big Lots stores that it recently won in the latest tranche of closings.
Tractor Supply Co. announced that it is growing its long term store growth target to 3,200 stores (up from its current count of ~2,400). The retailer will take a big step in 2025 with 90 new namesake stores and 10 new stores for its Petsense brand.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon had bad news for consumers hoping to see grocery prices fall in the new year. While he expressed optimism that milk and egg prices should start falling later in the year, he noted that dry goods and processed foods are unlikely to see prices drop much if it all in 2025 and will never return to pre-pandemic levels.
The Big View
Dessert trends have come and gone like hotcakes in the last few decades. The latest franchise to climb to the top of sugar mountain has been Crumbl Cookies. The Utah-based chain has opened 1,000 stores since its founding in 2017 and owes much of its popularity to social media, where influencers post videos reviewing the latest flavors. However, with profitability taking a nosedive recently, can the cookie chain keep customers coming back, or is the cookie craze starting to, well, crumble? Vox’s Whizy Kim has more in this article >>
Taylor Swift’s Eras Era may have finally come to an end and when all is said and done, the reigning queen of pop music’s tour drove at least $7 billion in retail economic impact since 2023. This includes nearly $2 billion in spending on apparel, food & beverage alone. 64% of Eras Tour attendees said they bought items specifically to attend a Swift concert. Read more here >>
Video of the Month: While the “Class of ‘62” retailers (Walmart, Target, Kmart, and Kohl’s) would end up redefining how Americans shopped in the latter part of the 20th century and beyond, all four brands were jumping on a trend that was pioneered a few years earlier in New England by Zayre’s, founded in 1956 in Hyannis, MA. While Zayre couldn’t outlast its competitors, the innovative merchandising of the Zayre team led their parent company to establish new concepts that are still with us today and are among retail’s most successful 21st century brands: TJ Maxx (later acquiring Marshalls and starting Homegoods, et al.) and BJ’s Wholesale Club. To find out more about Zayre’s legacy watch this recent video from Post-Mortar, the Retail History Show here >>
By the Numbers
Consumers are Willing to Drive Farther for Specialty Grocery
Shares of Visits Across Grocery Segments by Distance Traveled to the Store | Q32024
Source: Placer
From the Research Desk
As I was finishing this month’s edition of the Big VIP news broke that the Kroger-Albertson’s merger had been blocked by a US District Judge in Oregon. Shortly afterwards, Albertson’s filed suit against Kroger for “billions of dollars” in damages related to the failed transaction which was first proposed over two years ago. (See links to stories above)
While I’m not here to argue whether the merger was a good idea or not, it is undeniable that the nature of grocery shopping in America has changed significantly over the past 4 years. In the earlier incarnation of Big V as a family-owned traditional grocery chain, competition was largely relegated to other local and regional grocers. Chains such as A&P and Kroger had wider footprints, but the industry was one of the most bifurcated in retail. It’s this legacy of customer loyalty to local grocery operators that drove Kroger and Albertsons to both retain the local banners of the chains they acquired, such as Jewel in Chicago and Ralph’s in Los Angeles.
In the 21st century, however, groceries can be found at a wide variety of shopping destinations in a way that has disrupted the business models of traditional chains. Specialty grocers like Whole Foods and The Fresh Market court gourmet and health-conscious shoppers; while Aldi and Lidl continue to expand rapidly with discount concepts that are gaining market share in an era where grocery prices have risen 25% since the pandemic.
Perhaps the most disruptive presence in the grocery space has been the increasing prevalence of supercenters and warehouse clubs with national economies of scale, led by Walmart. In fact, Walmart long surpassed Kroger as the nation’s largest grocer with nearly 60% of their US revenue coming from food sales, which equated to $247.3 billion in 2023, nearly $100 billion more than Kroger. The nation’s largest warehouse club, Costco, sees roughly 40% of sales ($96 billion) from grocery. Even Target, whose grocery ambitions are much smaller than Walmart’s has taken a $24 billion slice of the pie away from traditional full-service grocery.
Ultimately, these changes within the grocery industry position Big V’s power center focused portfolio as a strategic advantage in the coming years. Grocery-anchored real estate was long seen as a stable place to grow value, since food is a constant necessity in good and bad economic environments. But as you can see above, the retailers that are increasingly winning more of America’s grocery dollars are also no strangers to our portfolio, either as tenants or shadow anchors. Our assets should continue to provide the convenience and relevance to American consumers for decades to come.
In late 1977, as Britain was swept up in the punk rock craze amid double-digit inflation and labor strife, it was one of the original British Invasion bands of the 1960’s that struck gold with the first punk rock Christmas carol. The Kinks’ “Father Christmas” combines guitar riffing and tubular bells along with lyrics about what would make British children and their parents happy during that holiday season, and it wasn’t toys. The song has since been covered by dozens of bands and featured on episodes of That 70s Show and Bob’s Burgers. Watch here >>
RETAIL MEME OF THE MONTH
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