It’s tough to be a department store in the digital age. Once vaunted names like Lord and Taylor and Barneys have ended up in the graveyard, while others like JC Penney, Sears, and Neiman Marcus have gone bankrupt.
Squeezed by fast fashion and online shopping, most department stores have shrunk their network, and built out their online platform to try to wrest back dollars from the likes of Amazon. But Kohl’s, currently the largest department store in the US with over 1,000 locations, is planning to open 100 more in the next four years.
It could seem counterintuitive—given how the pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce—but the company is betting that the future of the department store is new smaller branches and in more suburban locations.
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