(NEXSTAR) — Dozens of Big Lots stores are preparing to close roughly a month after the company warned in a U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that between 35 and 40 locations could shutter this year.
In that filing, company leaders pointed to inflation and difficulties in competing, saying they had "a substantial doubt" in their ability to continue.
“While we made substantial progress on improving our business operations in Q1, we missed our sales goals due largely to a continued pullback in consumer spending by our core customers, particularly in high ticket discretionary items," President and CEO Bruce Thorn said in a June statement.
Big Lots has not released a complete list of stores that will be closed but signs have already begun appearing at apparently affected locations.
Many stores have banners on their web pages that read "closing this location" while alerting customers they could "save up to 20% off." The location at 3775 Ambassador Caffery Parkway in Lafayette is one of them.
As of Tuesday, Nexstar found 89 additional stores across 27 states with closure notices on their web pages.
Based on their individual web pages, none of the Big Lots stores in Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, or Wyoming are set to close.
It's unclear when all of these stores may close, and what lead the company to close — or not close — specific locations. Big Lots did not immediately respond to Nexstar's request for information.
Big Lots currently has 1,389 locations across 48 states (only Alaska and Hawaii are without stores). The Columbus, Ohio, based company began in 1967, but it wasn't until 2001 that all of its store names switched to Big Lots.
