Report: Store closures set to balloon this year
Store closures have continued to gather pace and remain on track to far surpass the number of stores that shut down last year. 5,822 stores closed in the first half of the year alone, a new report from Coresight Research revealed.
By comparison, 7,325 brick-and-mortar stores were closed in the whole of last year. Coresight predicted that as many as 15,000 stores would shut up shop in 2025.
While the figures remain under that prediction for now, experts are still concerned about the future of in-store retail as e-commerce giants continue to surge ahead. Iconic department store Macy's and beloved retailer Kohl's have been among the household names to announce mass closures this year.
Pharmacies have also been thrown into the fray, with leading chains such as Walgreens and CVS closing dozens of underperforming locations. Bankrupt Rite Aid has also closed more than 1,000 locations across the country as it goes through the bankruptcy process.
'US retail is in a period of unusually high real-estate churn as cyclical impacts confront structural shifts,' John Mercer, Coresight's head of global research, said of the report's findings. 'US store closures are up by two-thirds compared to one year earlier, while openings are flat,' he added. 'That closures total is compounding closure numbers that were already up, year over year, in week 27 of 2024.'
The closure of local pharmacies is one of the biggest concerns amid the wider retail trend. The closures leave millions of Americans in so-called 'pharmacy deserts' — communities that do not have sufficient access to drugstores.
More than 48 million Americans now lack access to a nearby drugstore, research from healthcare company GoodRx found. The figure has increased markedly from 41.2 million in 2021, according to the research. Online competitors — like upstarts Capsule, Blink Health, and even Amazon — have been eating at the brick-and-mortar giants because of their delivery methods and convenience.
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