Walmart to Close 269 Stores as Retailers Struggle
By HIROKO TABUCHI

Walmart, whose supercenters once transformed the way Americans shop, announced on Friday that it would close a record number of stores in the United States and overseas, as it fights to hold its ground in a retail landscape under siege by the behemoth Amazon.

The giant retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., said in a statement that it would shutter 154 stores in the United States, or about 3 percent of its locations, as well as 115 stores overseas. It will also end its Walmart Express small-store format, which failed to catch on in urban areas. As many as 10,000 employees could lose their jobs in the United States and 6,000 elsewhere, it added.

The closures underscore the turmoil faced by brick-and-mortar retail across a variety of fronts. Web merchants are gobbling up a growing share of shopping dollars, their vast online catalogs rendering Walmart’s sprawling superstores increasingly less relevant. And consumers are spending less on traditional retail items like apparel.

According to one estimate, Amazon accounted for almost a quarter of all retail sales growth last year. Other retail stalwarts, including Macy’s, Sears and J. C. Penney, are also shuttering stores after a weak holiday sales season.

“Closing stores is never an easy decision, but it is necessary to keep the company strong and positioned for the future,” Doug McMillon, Walmart’s president and chief executive, said in a statement.

“It’s important to remember that we’ll open well more than 300 stores around the world next year,” he said. “So we are committed to growing, but we are being disciplined about it.”

Mr. McMillon had warned investors late last year that the company was considering shifts in its retail strategy. At the higher end of its new plan to add 142 to 165 new stores, Walmart’s store base in the United States would still rise; at the lower end, Walmart would, for the first time, shrink its United States footprint.

The closings account for less than 1 percent of global square footage and revenue, which totaled $485 billion last year.

Walmart’s exit from its smaller-format stores also highlights the difficulties it has faced in reaching more urban consumers. Introduced in 2011, its Express stores are slightly larger than a typical dollar store and were an effort to establish the retailer in bigger cities. But they have failed to make significant inroads or generate enough returns in the face of cutthroat competition from dollar stores and other discounters.

Over all, Walmart has been slow to pull out of a flat sales period after the recession and was slow to react to the pace of growth in online shopping.

Although sales have improved, the retailer has warned of lower profits going forward because of its investments in its work force and e-commerce. Over the last year, Walmart’s stock has tumbled 30 percent to its lowest level in half a decade.

Despite heavy spending on e-commerce initiatives, Walmart’s online sales growth is slowing.

“Physical retail, and large box in particular, is at a tipping point,” Richard Church, a

“There are too many stores in the U.S. across all retail sectors, low end to high end and everything in between,” Mr. Church wrote. “This is never more evident than when consumer demand is sluggish and decelerating, as it is now.”

It is a difficult time for retailers over all. Though gas is cheap and the job market is strong, retail sales have struggled to gain any traction, falling 0.1 percent in December from the previous month, according to figures released by the Commerce Department on Friday.

The National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, separately estimated that holiday sales rose just 3 percent from the previous year, below its projection of 3.7 percent growth.

The tepid showing by consumers adds to worries among investors, already troubled by the market turmoil in China and elsewhere around the globe, that the recovery in the American economy remains fragile.

There are bright spots in retail, like Lululemon Athletica, which raised its earnings outlook as it continued to ride a boom in athletics wear. L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret, reported its “best December ever” after the lingerie brand generated holiday buzz with a star-studded fashion show.

But heavyweights like Gap and Macy’s reported dismal holiday sales as warm weather in much of the country hurt sales of winter clothing. And on Thursday, Best Buy said its winter had been disappointing so far; sales have been hurt by a lull in demand for smartphones and other consumer electronics despite heavy discounting.

Noam Paransky, a director in the retail practice at the consulting firm AlixPartners, said that retailers were reaching the limits of competing on price, especially with online merchants eager to beat prices.

Brick-and-mortar retailers needed to come up with a better proposition, he said, to lure shoppers into their stores.

“ ‘Stack it high and let it fly’ doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “They have to figure out how to make shopping fun again.”

About 16,000 store employees will be affected worldwide by the closings, Walmart said. The stores are scheduled to shut down by the end of January.

Walmart said it intended to transfer as many workers as it could to nearby stores and offer severance pay to those who do not find new positions. The company is the nation’s largest private-sector employer.

Workers’ groups blasted Walmart’s move.

“For Walmart, its workers are disposable,” said Jess Levin, communications director at Making Change at Walmart, a group backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and a longtime critic of working conditions at the retailer.

“These latest store closings could very well be just the beginning,” she said. “This sends a chilling message to the company’s hard-working employees that they could be next.”

Of the 154 locations Walmart will close in the United States, 102 will be Walmart Express stores. The company said it would focus more on the slightly larger Neighborhood Market format, which has logged stronger sales (though it will also close 23 of those stores). Walmart is also closing 12 supercenters and four Sam’s Club membership stores.

The bulk of Walmart’s 115 closings overseas are in Brazil, where the economy is slowing. The retailer will also close 55 primarily small, loss-making stores in other Latin American markets, it said. The closures are expected by the end of the month.

Walmart said that costs associated with the closings would shave an estimated 20 to 22 cents from its earnings per share, and that the effect would be felt mostly in its fourth-quarter results, which it reports next month. That effect is not reflected in its quarter or full-year earnings guidance.

沃爾瑪關美154間 影響萬名員工

零售業巨擘沃爾瑪 （Walmart）15日宣布，它本月底將開始關閉全球各地269家商店，包括在美國的154家。

沃爾瑪在全球有1萬1600家商店和220萬名員工，包括在美國的4500家商店和140萬人。這次關店將影響1萬6000名員工，包括美國的大約1萬人。

沃爾瑪將結束2011年在美國推出的便利商店 （Walmart Express），而這次在美國關閉的包括102家這種較小型商店。

沃爾瑪表示它將致力於加強它最大的超級商店 （Supercenter），社區市場 （Neighborhood Market），以及網路作業。

美國將關掉的商店，有95%以上附近10哩內有別的沃爾瑪商店。

國際市場將關閉的115家商店，全部在拉丁美洲。經濟衰退的巴西受到衝擊最大，原有的558家沃爾瑪將關閉60家賠錢的商店。

預定關閉的所有商店在沃爾瑪集團全球營收只占不到1%。沃爾瑪表示它將盡可能安排受影響員工轉移到附近商店工作，無法安排調職的員工可以領到60天薪資，合乎資格者也能拿到遣散費，外加提供履歷和面談技巧訓練。

沃爾瑪總栽兼執行長董明倫 （Doug McMillon）三個月前就宣布，他們正檢討所有商店，以更靈活因應網路勁敵亞馬遜等各方競爭。

他說，關店向來是困難可是必要的決定，而沃爾瑪未來一年打算在世界各地開設300多家新店，用有紀律的方式繼續推動成長。

沃爾瑪打算到明年初在美國再設立50到60家超級商店，85到95家社區市場，以及7到10家山姆俱樂部量販店；在其他國家準備設立200到240家商店。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/business/walmart-to-close-269-stores.html

2016-01-17 世界日報 編譯黃秀媛