I went last-minute-ish Christmas shopping yesterday at our neighborhood mall.

It really shocked me!

While I was on the 2nd floor, I counted that 6 out of 9 stores had either "Going out of Business" or "Everything in store at least 50% off" or "Buy one, Get one Free entire store" signs in the windows.

The BBW store ALREADY has their holiday fragrances/creams/candles at 75% off - they don't usually do that *before* Christmas - it usually goes to 50% off the day after.

I am predicting that most of our stores will be closed by March...

As excited as I am for the after holiday sales, I'm starting to get creeped out by the lack of business success...

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"The errors of faith are better than the best thoughts of unbelief." - Thomas Russell

I think with the economic downturn stores this holiday season are offering more sales to increase their fourth quarter profits.
I seriously doubt most of the stores in your mall are going to be closed in three months.
But I guess we will just have to wait and see.

I don't go to the mall except a couple times a year. Last time I went (about 3 months ago), I would say 1/4 of the stores had been shut down and are empty. I would imagine there are more now. We just had Waffle House, Black Eyed Pea, Big Lots and Linens & Things close. There are a lot of empty buildings...

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

My DIL is the senior manager of a trendy clothing store. She said on Black Friday they were very busy and were busy Saturday but other than that, they've been really slow. She said usually they're busy all the time and that she'd never seen it like this before.

I work at a mall in western NY and while things were slower than normal after black Friday weekend, they have definitely picked back up over the past week or so. Our mall has had several new stores open in November and they announced a large addition to start in 2009.

I work in advertising and within the past month have has several of my clients close their doors and several others say, "if we have another 2 months like the last 2, we will be closing." These are businesses that have been in this community for decades. It's so sad.

are you talking about Eastview? We were surprised to hear they're getting even bigger...

Yes, I work at Eastview. It was CRAZY busy today! The parking lot got so gridlocked with people coming and going that at one point there was a 2 hour wait to get in/out of the place. People were just coming back into the mall to eat dinner and shop more :-)

I work in the mall, Bath and Bodyworks to be specific and business is booming there...we had a line 12-15 deep continuously throughout the day, no let up. The store was empty of merchandise when I left at 9pm....they are not hurting at all...

Our Bath and Bodyworks store was also very busy. I think the fact that they had 75% off much of their Christmas merhcandise and 50% off many of their gift sets was one of the reasons they were so busy. Plus add to that the coupons they were giving out for $10 off every $30, and free item (up to $13) with every $10 spent really made the deal even better! In general our mall was busy, but in the past few months several stores have closed along with a local Linen and Things, World Over Imports and soon to close Office Depot.

I think it's really strange/sad that BBW has started their massive 75% off sales on Christmas scented items a week before Christmas. I am a faithful BBW sale watcher - it's never happened in my store before. Anyone else's?

Yeah - it WAS packed in there on 12/18 - why wouldn't it be, when BBW is practically giving their stuff away this early (see LWIF brick and mortar board)...

I'm really feeling worried for these mall stores!

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"The errors of faith are better than the best thoughts of unbelief." - Thomas Russell

DH and I went out shopping today. We were surprised. While the parking lots were full, and there were a lot of ppl in the stores, we pretty much just walked right up to the registers. I was also a bit surprised that there were not more sales in the paper today. For several of the items we were looking, there were no sales to be found at all. I did hit a good deal at one of our grocery stores the other day. All of their Christmas items were 75% off. I bought a lot of containers, tea towels and potholders, and gift bags pretty cheap, as well as $11 Teddy Bears (very cute) for $2 each. That takes care of a few ppl who I want to give a "little something" to. I have never found 75% off before Christmas before.

I guess people were calling 911. Glad I got my shopping done there on Monday!

I talked w/ the manager @ my local CVS last week. He said business is extremely slow and people are hanging onto their money this year. I've noticed that our Michael's store cleared out most of their Christmas stuff last week which is unheard of around here.

Look for retailers to walk away from their leases next year. I think people are going to be shocked at the number of store closings in '09. If you get gift cards for Christmas, I'd spend them fast!

Even DH was floored last week when he went shopping during the day. There was no traffic to fight and nobody in the stores he shopped and these were major retailers.

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I want to keep ALL of my paycheck and eliminate the pyramid scheme known as Social Security (there is no lockbox ). Do you want the same thing? www.fairtax.org

We had bad weather last week. Nobody went shopping. I went and I was practically the only one in the store. I went to $ Tree and I was only one of three in the store! It was the first time in weeks I didn't have to stand in line.
And I went to the mall, Macy's, JCP, Wet Seal, a bunch of stores they were all empty!
If I had several thousand "extra" right now I would pump it into the economy.

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The political system is broke and it's a joke.

I don't know if it's because of the snowstorm that we had on Sunday, but oh my, the stores were jam-packed yesterday afternoon. There was a 1-mile backup to get off the highway at the mall exit on my way home from work. Went to Target to get some photos reprinted and there was a line of traffic to get in and out of the parking lot. (This is a weird store with only one exit). It took us 25 minutes - and a lot of bad attitude from other drivers - to get OUT of the Target parking lot. So....you wouldn't know times were tough here....

cj/

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I was walking home one night and a guy hammering on a roof called me a paranoid little weirdo. In morse code. -Emo Phillips

There was talk a couple of weeks ago that the owners of the mall here might go bankrupt very soon. I guess it's just a wait and see thing.

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Barb


My GOD Bless our Country and our Troops, and rid the World of terroists.