Here is the one everyone wants to see. This Fry's opened in 2004 shortly before the Southwest Houston location opened up in early 2005. This Fry's location is unlike any other with a space theme inside and outside as well. When you drive up on either side of the store, you see this mock space station edge.
Both sides of the store entrance have this decoration.
The main entrance of the store is pretty awesome even 15 years after the store opened. There are lots of neat things inside of this store.
The entrance has foil insulation that is falling down.
But first impressions inside of the main store are jawdropping. I have been to this store multiple times over the years and I still love this theme. A huge shuttle is right above the walkway into the store.
This is the front of the shuttle with astronauts in the background for realism. The customer service desk is below the astronauts.
This is the main aisle of the store. A huge satellite (or is it the Space Station) takes up most of the aisle all the way to the back of the store.
Another view of the main entrance to the store.
Not as cool as the entrance to the store, but the computer parts area looks nice with the American and International flags.
Cafe 34 is just as neat as the rest of the store.
More satellites are all over the store. The presentation rooms are to the left.
This store is a little more organized and keeps their smaller selection of items close to the signage. The other 2 Fry's locations we visited had signage and no products near the department signage.
Another view of the huge satellite with office supplies below.
The demo rooms are sadly mostly empty like at the other Fry's locations.
The TV department is pretty nice as well.
TV's on the floor where shelving used to be at.
The presentation rooms side view.
Check out the wall design.
The television department here suffers from the same inventory issues as the other Fry's locations.
The audio testing room is somewhat plain in comparison to the rest of the store.
This corner of the store looks really empty. They need to put up more display televisions.
The car speaker wall was out of service.
The huge selection of air conditioners.
Stock room issues emptiness.
As you can see, the flags go all the way across the front of the store.
The color changing LED frame around this banner is a nice touch.
Boxed appliances on the sales floor to take up space.
The store looks massive from this viewpoint.
Here is the other side of that stockroom.
Magazine aisle across from the checkouts.
Restrooms/telephones. As you can see the telephones are gone.
More empty space taken up by appliances and other large boxed items. These are the front aisles that were full of music and movies years ago.
Now this is all that remains of the music and movie selection.
Entryway to the checkout counters.
Looking towards Cafe 34.
The records hanging from the wall are just above the record section.
Some up close photos of the products on this aisle.
The record selection was pretty sad.
The advertisement monitors were blank at this location.
The checkout counters.
Now onto the other side of the store starting with the computer parts.
As you can see, this store appears to have more stock in this area than the previous locations.
Looking at the front displays from the computer side of the store.
Plenty of shopping hand baskets.
USA!
More views of the product lines available in this side of the store.
Front entrance/exit and checkout counters.
The computer component help desk.
More computer department stock photos.
Back to the main aisle in the center of the store.
Books, toys and games.
Lawn and garden. 😬
Perfumes, kites, and toys.
More perfumes, colognes, and cosmetics.
Video games.
Scooters
More toys and games.
More video games.
The Nintendo selection is pretty sad. Keep in mind that this was 2019, before the Covid Nintendo product shortages.
Here we are in the back corner of the store, computer and office departments.
Computer displays.
Not sure what was going on here, but the shelves were nearly completely empty.
Keyboards and mice look pretty slim.
There is a little more stock in the backroom on this side of the store.
The other back corner of the store has a decent amount of stock.
But the computer accessories are lacking.
This part of the stockroom is empty.
Looking towards the middle of the store, from the back corner.
The computer displays.
There is so much going on in this part of the store, it is easy to get distracted.
Another help desk.
The Apple Computer counter is pretty sad. Not many display models left.
More of the aisles in the computer side of the store.
The office department.
This shuttle looks almost like an inflatable baloon.
This shopping basket display is out of baskets.
The entrance to the main presentation room, sadly the door was locked.
I forgot to mention the astronauts in the glass at the entrance to each small presentation room.
Not much going on here.
The audio department of the store.
I like the decorative lighting in this presentation room, but none of the displays worked.
You can see wires hanging down above the entrance to the room.
I wonder how many times these astronaut suits have freaked employees out.
Now for more of the store.
More views of the car stereo testing areas.
Tons of these signs all over the store.
Found the small pet department. It is funny that hair dryers and hair curlers are right by that Pet Grooming sign, lol.
The kitchen appliances.
Cell phones and accessories.
Mattresses and more.
This is all that remains of the magazines, the shelves used to be a lot longer.
Another view of the stock room from near the restrooms. This stockroom is near the TV's and appliances.
Looking towards the large appliances.
Now we head to the checkouts, down the long impulse buy aisle.
An up-close view of the checkouts. Notice the murals on the walls in the background.
As we close this post, here are more views of the exterior of the store after dark.
Road sign off of I-45.
More blog posts in the works.
I will combine my comments about this Fry's and about the reply you made in the West Rd. Fry's here since I suppose those thoughts are relevant to all Fry's stores.
ReplyDeleteI made a stop at the West Rd. Fry's just the other day after I made my initial comment on that post. Unfortunately, they're closing the store at 7pm now because of the pandemic. I arrived there just a few minutes after 7 so it ended up being a wasted trip, oh well. They had some products in their ad I was interested in, but I suppose I'll have to try again at some other time.
It's interesting that you find the NASA store to be better stocked than the West Rd. one. I've been shopping at both stores for about a decade now and I actually probably shop at the NASA store more than the West Rd. store in recent times. That said, I usually find the West Rd. store to be better stocked than the NASA one. The NASA one also seems to be a bit smaller to me, but it's not like that matters now with Fry's inventory problems.
When I've searched the Fry's website for products I'm interested in, they often show up as being out of stock at the NASA store, but in stock at the other two Houston locations. I'm not sure if Fry's inventory system is accurate though, who knows. Anyway, because of this, I've been a bit reluctant to stop at the NASA store here recently to look for things I'm interested in because I'm not sure if they have what I want in stock.
As we discussed in the West Rd. Fry's post, Fry's makes it difficult to get in and out of their parking lots. This is especially the case at the NASA location. When I first visited this store in 2008 or 2009, it took me quite a bit of time just to figure out how to get into the parking lot! The store is right off of I-45, but actually getting into it is not so simple.
It has always seemed to me that this store is less busy than the West Rd. Fry's. Granted, when I visit the NASA Fry's, it's usually during the week.
This store is very impressive looking though. In many ways, it's more impressive than the West Rd. location in terms of decor, but that's not to say that the West Rd. store is at all bland. I don't know how many tourists stop at Fry's during their visits to the Johnson Space Center or to Galveston, but this store is certainly a worthy stop for any retail tourists visiting the SE side of Houston. I can see international tourists really finding this store to be interesting. Well, at least they did during Fry's better days, it's hard to say about now.
I was reading something on another non-retail site and many people were commenting that Best Buy stores have many empty shelves these days. This is not due to company problems, but rather because Best Buy is having trouble getting inventory due to the pandemic. It seems that suppliers are having trouble making electronic devices due to parts shortages and such.
It seems the demand for computer products is quite high these days due to work/study from home, but some retailers are having trouble taking advantage of this high demand. Some people are speculating that Amazon is bullying suppliers into providing them with the limited inventory of products, but that's just speculation. Then again, perhaps we can put 1 and 2 together when Amazon and a few others have ample inventory and others don't.
But, anyway, I know we've mentioned this before for the last few months, but B&M retailers may have trouble filling the demand for electronic items this Christmas. While I'm sure Walmart and others will have some blowout prices for the Christmas season, don't be surprised if the prices for electronics are generally higher this year than in the past even with the poor economy.
I wonder if the website for Fry's is accurate or if West Rd. does a better job of keeping their stock in the system. I have noticed a lot of issues with some of the major sports retailers lately. Academy, Bass Pro, and Dick's SG have all been inaccurate lately with certain items. It is so bad that you are better off calling or showing up at the store to see if they have what you need in stock.
DeleteThat Fry's is a pain to get to if you are coming in from the North. I want to check out the store again in the near future, but I rarely go to that side of town these days.
I have noticed most retailers seem to have issues with their electronics stock. Video game consoles are very tough to find these days especially the Nintendo Switch. Printer Ink, is tough to find as well. Amazon may have something to do with the shortages at Brick and Mortar retailers.
This year is going to be a strange Christmas season for everyone. I can see a lot of shortages on the supply side leading to higher prices. I can also see retailers stuck with a lot of products in certain categories that will not sell. I am also interested in how Black Friday sales will go with social distancing in place. I am glad a lot of retailers have decided to close on Thanksgiving Day this year, hopefully it will be a permanent change.
I decided to visit the NASA Fry's to see if the Fry's website was wrong about them not having the stuff I wanted in-stock. Well, unfortunately, the website was correct. Just about everything I was looking for appeared to be out of stock. The inventory was worse, perhaps even a lot worse, than the situation was when you took these photos. There were large sections of the store which had no inventory or displays at all.
DeleteI'm not sure if they had any TVs or computers out on display at all. There were large sections of the store which were just completely empty. I couldn't even find some electronic basics like RCA cables for connecting stereo components. Even some grocery stores stock that stuff, but Fry's didn't have them.
There were some products where it seemed that Fry's had a lot of inventory. They did seem to have a lot of batteries, but I didn't look too closely at them to see if they were batteries people would want to buy. Fry's had a lot of 100 pack of Ridata CD-Rs in their inventory. They probably had over a hundred out on the shelves and in the bins and the price was really good. That might have been a great alternative to the discs in their ad that I was looking for which they didn't have (I didn't even see an empty space for them on the shelves so I'm not sure if that Fry's ever had that advertised product), but the packaging on those Ridata discs was perhaps the worst I've ever seen on blank discs. It was so bad that the bottom of the packaging was actually the last disc in the spindle. Thus, the bottom disc, and perhaps a few more at the bottom, would be too scratched to use. I can't fault Fry's for this because that stupidly cheap design came from the disc manufacturer, but that was a major disappointment.
Oh, the perfume section was quite well stocked so at least there's that.
One funny thing I found was in the cell phone accessories department. Those aisles were decently full, but they had a lot of Uber branded cell phone holders for cars. The packaging on those clearly stated that they were "Exclusively at Best Buy" and they had the Best Buy logo prominently on the front. Fry's must have gotten a closeout deal on those or something. I wonder how much of Fry's inventory is made up of closeouts.
Given all these inventory problems, it's perhaps not a surprise that the store was not busy. There were maybe five or six other shoppers in the store besides myself. At times, I had the whole quadrant of the store to myself. Since they didn't have any background music playing, it was eerily quiet in there at times.
While I hoped to buy multiple products, I ended up buying nothing during this visit mostly because I could not find anything to buy. I'm guessing I'll have to make it to the West Rd. Fry's if I want to buy anything from them and that assumes that their inventory report online is accurate.
I need to check out that Fry's again. It sounds like they have really struggled to get their store back to normal inventory levels.
DeleteI bought some CD's from Fry's years ago that the labels began peeling off after a use or two. It was so frustrating because I had spent time creating the CD's only to have them mess up so quickly. I had to replace all of those CD's with a higher quality brand. Thankfully I was not counting on those discs to backup valuable photos or programs.
Maybe Fry's wants you to feel bad for them and buy some fragrances since that is probably the best stocked department in the store. The exclusive Best Buy items is pretty funny, maybe they are cheaper than Best Buy was on these items.
I think I need to go to Fry's instead of Academy these days. Every time I go to Academy, I seem to find something to buy.
I stopped by the West Rd. Fry's this weekend to see if it looks as similarly miserable as the NASA Fry's. Well, it's a good news and a bad news situation. The good news is that it is indeed better stocked than the NASA Fry's, but the bad news is that the inventory is still pretty bad.
DeleteIn both cases, the computer and TV display areas are almost completely bare. The West Rd. Fry's has maybe just a handful of things out on demo in those areas. The NASA Fry's doesn't even have that. The West Rd. Fry's has moved all the blank media from the computer department and has moved it all to the parts department where it takes up an entire aisle. In some ways, small re-shuffling of items perhaps makes the West Rd. Fry's not look as empty, but there are still empty areas obviously.
There were more shoppers at the West Rd. Fry's than what I saw at the NASA Fry's, but I'm comparing a weekend to a weekday so it's not a fair comparison. Still, there weren't a lot of shoppers at the West Rd. Fry's even if there were some. I will say that the parts department, the customer service desk, and the exit were all completely unmanned during my visit. I'm not even sure where they process returns and in-store pick-ups these days. It must be at the main cash registers. The lights weren't even on at the customer service desk. Oh, I should mention that the cafes were closed at both locations.
Like the NASA Fry's, the West Rd. Fry's did have a fully stocked fragrances department, lol. Both locations have a big selection of face masks and hand sanitizer for sale. I didn't see the exclusive Best Buy phone mounts at the West Rd. Fry's, but I can't say I really looked for them either. I'm sure Fry's is cheaper for that stuff than Best Buy.
I will say that the A/C was running normally at the West Rd. Fry's. At the NASA Fry's, I think it was running, but they had it turned up to a warm setting. I suppose sweaty NASA Fry's shoppers might be more inclined to buy some cologne, lol.
The West Rd. Fry's did also have a lot of office supplies and backpacks so at least they're stocked for back to school if anyone shops at Fry's anymore for that stuff.
Fry's does have a 50 pack of HP brand CD-Rs on sale this week for something like $5 or $6 (though I think that sale is ending today). That's a pretty good deal. The HP discs are made by CMC Magnetics just like the Philips discs sold at Big Lots (Fry's sells Philips as well) and the Verbatim discs sold just about everywhere else except CVS. The packaging on those HP discs is not great, but it's better than the pathetic packaging on those Ridata discs I mentioned earlier. At least the HP discs have a protective bottom to the spindle. The Philips and Verbatim discs come in an actual 'cake box' which is the best kind of spindle packaging.
Fry's has sold some shoddy CD-Rs before. Back in 2001 or 2002, I was helping a friend who wanted some electronic music he composed burned to some Fry's CD-Rs he bought by himself since he didn't have a CD burner. Those CD-Rs were so bad. They skipped all over the place and the dye layer had all kinds of imperfections in it. I'm surprised they burned at all, but I had a good USB Sony burner from Circuit City at the time so that probably helped (I still have it and use it on occasion). OTOH, I have purchased some good CD-Rs at Fry's that were cheap so you just have to know which sales are actually good deals and which are just landfill fillers. Sometimes it is hard to tell though. I'd certainly stick to name brand discs or CMC Pro brand discs for valuable data and burn the discs at a moderate speed.
I have not been to Academy in a year or two. I usually go there when looking for athletic shoes, but I have not needed a new pair in a while. My old pair of New Balances from Palais Royal are wearing like iron.
The recent videos I have seen of Fry's stores in Dallas and California have the same display issues, sanitizer, and face mask displays.
DeleteThe stretched out product lines are also seen in those videos. One other common thing is that shelves are being removed and more empty floor space is being created. It looks like what Sears is doing at a lot of their stores. Very sad.
The CD-R's sound like a good deal. I haven't made a CD in years though. My last computer with a CD drive is now broken after my son dropped it. It lasted less than 6 months after I fixed it. The whole screen shattered, so we pulled the good parts for other computers in the house. I now have a small backup laptop that was a gift for Father's Day.
I have been to Academy a lot here recently. I picked up a new hobby and purchased 2 bikes from them as well here recently. I should have picked up their credit card for discounts months ago, but I am caught up for now.
I wonder how many people go to Fry's for pandemic supplies. I suspect the only people who buy that stuff from Fry's are those looking for electronics who end up not finding what they want, but maybe they still stock up on face masks and sanitizer. Given the lack of customers in their stores, perhaps they're hoping to attract a lot of shoppers who want to maximize social distancing?
DeleteYou're right that Fry's is resorting to Sears-like tricks to make the store look fuller than what it really is, but those tricks only work for so long before it becomes painfully obvious that the store is having major inventory problems. I'm really not sure how Fry's can survive with their current inventory problems. Yes, they do have quite a few things like blank CDs, but they don't even have some electronic basics like audio cables for stereo components. Even dollar stores and some grocery stores sell that stuff, but you won't find it at Fry's these days.
That's unfortunate that your computer suffered an accident. A lot of computers, especially laptops and those desktops where the monitor and computer are integrated into one unit, no longer come with CD/DVD drives. It's possible to get an external USB CD/DVD drive if you really want to make or read optical discs. They even have drives which can play/burn Blu-Ray discs for about twice the price.
I noticed on Big Lots' website that they were clearing out their selection of Philips blank CDs and DVDs by marking them down 50%. They are being replaced on the shelf with Verbatim brand discs. They are charging a bit more for the Verbatims than they did for the Philips when the Philips were at regular price, but oh well. The Philips and Verbatim discs are both made by CMC Magnetics and should be more or less the same thing. With the clearance on the Philips discs, they are selling a 50 pack of CDs or DVDs for about $6.50. That's about the same price as the HP discs made by CMC that Fry's had, but the Philips discs come in an actual cake box spindle package that is superior to the packaging on the HPs (though the HP packaging is still better than the garbage packaging on the Ridata discs that Fry's sells for even less). So, yeah, I swung by my local Big Lots and picked up a pack of Philips CD-Rs while they were on sale.
While I was there, I noticed that they were reshuffling their inventory a little bit compared to my previous visit to the same Big Lots in March. Some shelves were completely empty, but that might have something to do with the reshuffle and perhaps because Big Lots was starting to put their Christmas stuff out so perhaps the empty shelves were caused by seasonal inventory changes. I don't know. The shelves which had products were mostly full so at least there's that.
The Big Lots I visited, the 1960 & Jones Rd. store, had a decent number of shoppers in it while I was there and the people ahead of me in the checkout line were buying a lot of stuff. I noticed that the store has two big, round HVAC vents near the checkouts. They aren't quite Kmart level big, but they're pretty impressive looking. I think those are relics from the Kroger that used to be in that spot years ago. Given that Kmart used to be in that shopping center, that might be a store worth photographing for the blog. Their carts look like relics from the 1990s at least as well.
Biking is a good hobby. With what feels like an early start to fall this year, it might be nice to ride around while the weather is nice. Academy seems like a good place to shop for that hobby. I remember that Sportstown USA had some unusual bikes for a big box sporting goods store like Peugeot bikes. Of course, Sportstown USA is long gone and those memories are from around 1991 or so.
Fry's management is probably hoping that they can get the impulse buyers to buy from their oddball departments like you mentioned. I can see someone saying "They didn't have my computer part, but they at least have these masks", lol.
DeleteI am guessing the next part of the Fry's stock plan is to close off sections of the store. Those stores should have been downsized years ago, but now they are way too late. They could have cut the size of their stores to make room for another large store or smaller stores and collect rent from the store/stores. I am interested to see if things change before the Holiday Season, but we are getting really close now.
I may look into getting a DVD/CD exterior drive one day. I still have some things backed up on old CD's that I need to put on SD cards or flash drives. My car still has a CD player as well and from time to time I like to put on a CD. The quality is usually better than my phone MP3 player. I still have at least 20 or so blank CD's left from my last bundle. I will remember Big Lots if I need to get more in the future.
Big Lots usually fills about 25% of their stores for Halloween and Christmas merchandise. A lot of departments are consolidated throughout the store to make room for those items.
I wonder if the Big Lots is using the MacFrugal's carts with Big Lots labels placed on them. I noticed the Texas Thrift near Kuykendahl and FM 1960 is open, I bet that store has the old Kmart vents. Big Lots usually does not remodel a store very well after taking over so some old relics can be found like the A/C vents.
The bike is good, I am way out of shape though. I am glad the weather turned so we can worry less about Hurricanes for a few months, and I can condition myself better before Summer gets here. At least we can always watch the movie Problem Child to see the inside of a Sportstown USA store. I wish we could say the same about Montgomery Ward or other vintage stores.
The Texas Thrift that is a former Kmart you are talking about does have some of those classic big round HVAC vents on the ceiling. When I went there like about a week or two after it opened last year and I stood under the vent and I could feel the a gust coming from it.
DeletePerhaps Fry's inventory problems will improve a little bit when the electronics inventory problems other retailers are facing becomes less of an issue. The inventory problems started even before the pandemic so it's not like we can be hopeful that Fry's will return to their past glory anytime soon.
DeleteMaybe Fry's should sell their typical electronics and appliances in part of the store and turn the rest of it into a general merchandise closeout variety store kind of like MacFrugal's or something. They're somewhat halfway there, but I think the perfumes they sell are real ones and not designer imposters which may or may not cause skin rashes like you would have expected at MacFrugal's circa 1993, lol.
Big Lots is certainly not above recycling carts. Here's an example of a plastic MacFrugal's cart which was relabeled as a Big Lots cart. Here is an Ames cart which was rather poorly turned into a Big Lots cart.
In the case of the Jones Rd. & 1960 Big Lots, I actually do think those are old metal MacFrugal's carts with the MacFrugal's logos removed from the handles and replaced with Big Lots ones. Those carts look ancient, they're probably older than the plastic MacFrugal's cart I linked earlier. It wouldn't surprise me if they are actually old Pic-N-Save carts from the 1980s which have gone through MacFrugal's and Big Lots rebranding.
Here's an image from Google of the round HVAC vents at the Jones Rd. Big Lots. One thing I noticed about my local Big Lots is that it has a higher Google Reviews score (4.3) than the local Target (4.2) and Walmart (3.9). It looks like all the Big Lots in Houston have high review scores. Their customers must like their stores even given how retro they are.
I was reading a post about a closing Sears on the My Florida Retail blog this weekend and I came across a real oddity in a 2019 post. He caught his local Sears selling Sears branded rolls of packing bubbles and foam wrap for moving stuff. I don't think I've ever seen that before. If the Pasadena Sears sells that Christmas, maybe they'll sell some to people desperate for gift ideas after all the good stuff is unavailable this year, lol! Also, that Craftsman truck Christmas toy decoration with the current/semi-current Sears logo is pretty neat.
From what I saw on Google Maps, that Texas Thrift does indeed have classic Kmart HVAC vents. It might be worth checking out. I'd like to visit that store myself. It'll probably make it down there one of these days.
One nice thing about blank CD-Rs is that it's a good idea to rip your real CDs to CD-Rs if you're planning on using them in the car. That way, you don't have to expose your real CDs to the extreme temperatures that cars can get and you don't have to worry about scratching your CDs in the car. If you scratch it, you can just make another copy from your original. Also, you can load a bunch of MP3s on a CD-R and play it in the car.
I forgot that Problem Child was filmed in Dallas. We have a glimpse inside Sears via The Brady Bunch Movie and JCPenney in the Dawn of the Dead. I'm not sure if Montgomery Ward was ever in a movie, but I'd like to see it if they were.
In addition to Peugeot, another odd brand of bikes that Sportstown USA sold was Panasonic. I had no idea Panasonic even made bikes before I saw them at Sportstown USA. I wondered at the time if Sony also made bikes, lol.
Those A/C vents are pretty strong from what I have seen at other stores.
DeleteThat is a good idea for Fry's to separate their stores and put electronics on one side and the rest of the odd things they sell on the other side. It would probably be an easy conversion at this point since the electronics are somewhat empty.
DeleteOllie's also recycles carts from other retailers. I may have already mentioned this, but the Ollie's stores we visited had Babies R Us and Toys R Us shopping carts. I am glad to see these carts finding new life instead of being lost forever. The red Ames cart is a find, a lot of Ames carts have that turquoise/green color.
Big Lots is a more comfortable place to shop IMO than larger big box retailers. Big Lots also has the treasure hurt aspect, you never know what you will find.
I saw a lot to like in that 2019 post at Sears. The 125 year signage is something that I was never able to add to my collection. I never noticed that Sears Craftsman truck, I wonder if you can still order one. The Christmas display may also be a thing of the past if the rumors are true. I need to pass by the Pasadena Sears to see how things are going. I have also never seen the bubble wrap with the Sears logo, especially with a modern Sears logo on the package.
Another reader also commented on the Texas Thrift, it sounds like the store may be worth a visit one of these days.
That is a good idea, I stayed away from making copies of good CD's to keep my CD inventory from ballooning up. I still have a lot of CD's that have been sitting in books for many years now. I wonder if any are stuck in the books after all of these years.
It seems like malls were not incorporated into movies until the Dawn of the Dead. The famous Blues Brothers chase scene comes to mind, it was filmed in 1980 I believe.
I can't remember seeing a Panasonic bike, lol. I didn't have much experience at Sportstown USA, we only went twice to the Greenspoint store from what I can remember. Going against Academy and Oshman's at the time was a tough challenge, and they were not able to make it. At least we do have some movie scenes available unlike so many others.
Part I:
DeleteBig Lots probably does not have as much of the treasure hunt aspects as they did back when they were primarily a closeouts store instead of a discount store as they are now, but I suspect that shoppers still show up wondering what items might be on sale. I've heard rumors that Big Lots might be bringing back more closeout items, including clothing, but I'm not sure. For as little as Big Lots' stores change, they do seem to change their inventory mix a little bit quite often.
I'm not surprised to hear that Ollie's recycles carts especially since Big Lots does. Ollie's is in many ways what Big Lots was about 20 years ago. With the potential for there to be some empty big box locations in Houston with potentially low rent, I wonder if Ollie's will finally enter this market. I suspect they might do well.
There certainly were some interesting things in that Melbourne Sears post. The Albertsons Florida Blogger did a handful of posts about that location including some closing store posts so you might want to check those out. But, yeah, I've heard the same rumors you've heard about Sears not having Christmas displays this year. That will be very strange, but it's not like Sears will have much inventory to sell this Christmas. I'll probably try to make it to the Pasadena Sears sometime before Christmas to check it out.
I'm not sure if Sears will still have that Craftsman truck, but I kind of doubt it. Maybe someone will sell it online used for a low price. It would be a nice souvenir. Perhaps Florida got the Sears bubblewrap and Texas got the Kmart tarps, lol. You never know what odd items will show up in Sears stores.
I'm not aware of any movies which were filmed in malls prior to the Dawn of the Dead. There probably are some given the popularity of malls in the 1960s and early 1970s, but I suppose they must not be famous movies or famous scenes at least. There were several movies in the 1980s with major mall scenes and the Blues Brothers really did kick that decade off. That was a great movie and the mall chase scene is a classic. I have the movie on VHS and I think I have a recording of it on DVD that I recorded off TV many years ago.
Part II:
DeleteThe closest we may get to seeing vintage footage of a Montgomery Ward are these two 1986 clips from inside the Tallahassee, FL, Wards that were filmed by an electronics store employee on their camcorder demos. There's not a lot of the store of the store to see aside from electronics, lamps, and furniture, and it appears it was recorded before Electric Avenue was implemented, but at least it's a nice look at the electronics department as it was then. The employee's sister, who is in the majority of the shots, acts just the way you'd expect a teenager in 1986 to act, lol. I'm sure you remember the early days of camcorders when people didn't know how to act when they were being recorded. Here's the first clip on YouTube and here is the second one.
That Tallahassee Wards probably looked more like the Memorial City Mall Montgomery Ward than something like the Willowbrook Mall Wards. At the Willowbrook store, I remember the lamps department being on the first floor and furniture and electronics being on the second floor. The Willowbrook store would have looked a little fancier too.
Sportstown USA was quite a bit bigger than the typical Academy or Oshman's store in the early 1990s before Academy started building newer, bigger stores and Oshman's started expanding their Super Sports concept. The Academy I would have shopped at most frequently at the time would have been the one in the Builders Square shopping center right around where FM 1960 W turns into Highway 6 just past 290. I believe it's self-storage there now, but that shopping center also had a Grandy's, Pizza Inn, and Bert Wheeler liquor store back in the day. That location was replaced by the old Willowbrook location that also moved again to the current location in The Commons. Another Academy opened up near that FM 1960/Hwy. 6 location, but that opened up a number of years after the original store closed.
Another Academy I would have shopped at in that era would have been the tiny one that was just before Kuykendahl if you're going east on FM 1960 W. There was a Mobile One car stereo store across the street from it back in the day. That tiny store is a far cry from the modern Academys. I would have shopped a little bit at the Tomball Academy as well which was in an old Safeway. That Academy was closed when HEB expanded their location in the same shopping center from a Pantry store to a full store. That was probably the first full HEB store I saw in the Houston area.
Another short-lived sporting goods store was the Houston Sports store on 249 & Willow Chase Blvd. kind of behind The Commons. It's where the Willowbrook Methodist Hospital is today. That store had a newly built location in the early 1990s that looked a bit like an early 1980s Walmart. It was a major failure and closed after only a few months of being in business. I did go there once though, but my only major memory of the place was thinking that they wouldn't last long, lol.
One thing I remember about Sportstown USA was that they had an abundance of Gatorade Gum in stock.
Your CDs in the CD books should be okay as long as they weren't stored in a warm/hot location. The best CD books had fabric-like sleeves instead of those soft plastic sleeves. The plastic can stick to the CDs, especially when hot, and cause damage. But, yeah, if you plan on listening to CDs in the car, it might be best to get another book just for the car and keep burned copies of your original CDs in the car book while keeping the originals at home. That'll keep the potential damage down on the originals. CD-Rs are more sensitive to UV light, but if the CD-Rs go bad, you can just burn new copies from the originals. CD-Rs are pretty cheap especially if you get a good deal like what Big Lots has on their closeout Philips discs or some of the sales Fry's has on CD-Rs.
Ollie's is getting close, they recently opened a store in College Station. I saw a new store opening soon in Kileen later this month as well. Those stores take the randomness to another level that Big Lots does not.
DeleteWe did get those Sears and Roebuck bags from the Pasadena store a few months ago. I made sure to buy a few because those were a real treat to see in 2020. I can't imagine how empty the stores are going to look with no seasonal displays while the rest of the store inventory continues to shrink.
I need to get another copy of the Blues Brothers, my Bluray disappeared a few years back. I did pick up the Legend of Billy Jean at Fry's when I documented the West Road store. It is odd that malls were not really featured in movies until the 1980's, malls were really popular way before then.
Part 2
DeleteMontgomery Ward does have that Electric Avenue video that you sent me a few months back. Maybe some of the cheesy training videos will make it to YouTube one day, those can be a hilarious look at the past.
Academy has moved locations a lot like Walmart did in the 90's and early 2000's. One of the strangest Academy moves I have seen is in Lake Charles where a new store opened up from one side of a shopping plaza to the other in a similarly sized building. Usually Academy moves to a much larger building, but that was not the case here. The old Academy building is now a Conn's after being vacant for a few years.
Academy has some huge stores. The I-10 and Uvalde store expanded into the old Circuit City building and has to be over 100,000 square feet. It is a long walk from one end of that store to the other. In comparison the Dick's Sporting Goods stores at Deerbrook and Willowbrook are in the 80,000 square foot range, but on 2 levels.
A large sporting goods store only lasting a few months is crazy. They must have really put themselves in debt with the move. The 80's and 90's was the era of bigger stores as we saw with numerous failed retail concepts.
Gatorade gum, I remember that stuff. I wonder if anyone still sells that gum.
My CD collection is stored in a closet. The closet doesn't have a true A/C vent, but it doesn't get nearly as hot as the garage does in the Summer. Maybe one of these days here soon, I will dig one of the books out and see how the CD's are looking.
I will reply on the remaining comments at a later time.
There was a very interesting 1950s Montgomery Ward video on YouTube many years ago, but I guess it got deleted. Fortunately, it looks like someone else uploaded it to YouTube this year so we can get another look at it here. I'm almost positive that the Wards being shown at 17:40 is the Wards that was over by the Palm Center in Houston. I believe you were able to get some great images of that place as the King's Best Market many years ago before it closed.
DeleteThose Sears Christmas displays, even the small ones they've had in recent years, always drew a crowd. I remember making a few visits to the Willowbrook Mall Sears last Christmas and seeing people checking things out even though there really wasn't much to see. Those Sears bags were a good find and it's interesting that Sears didn't even really have them set out for sale. Maybe we'll see some more interesting stuff at the Pasadena Sears this year as they clear out the warehouses.
Academy has done a lot of moving of locations over the years and it often doesn't make sense. I wonder if that's why they are having some major financial problems currently. Their stores do well so they only have themselves to blame for poor business decisions leading to excessive debt. That Lake Charles Academy situation is quite strange. I know it was a bit strange when Academy closed their original Willowbrook location and moved to The Commons. The location at The Commons is a little bigger, but it felt like the old location was big enough. I suppose the new location has slightly better visibility.
That Houston Sports store was one of the biggest retail busts I've ever seen. After visiting the store, I couldn't believe that they spent so much money building a new building just to house such a disappointing store. During the 1980s and early 1990s when big box category killers were really booming, there were a lot of 'me too' attempts at forming big box chains where the new stores weren't really differentiating themselves well from the competition. Thus, a lot of those failed just like the situation with the dot-com bust in the early 2000s.
I can see why people tried to open sporting goods stores at that time. Athletic shoes were really booming then, things like Rollerblades were popular, just about everyone was buying those driveway basketball hoops, and the new houses being built at the time started implementing game rooms which allowed people to put in things like table tennis and home gyms in their homes. There was a lot of new sales potential, but most customers ended up going to the sporting goods stores they always shopped at like Academy and Oshman's since both saw the trends and were growing their stores with them.
I have not seen Gatorade gum in a long time, but maybe Academy has it. Even if they do, I bet they won't make a whole wall of Gatorade gum like Sportstown USA had, lol.
The bulk of my CDs are organized in CD storage boxes in my closet. Like your closet, mine is not air conditioned, but the room it is in is air conditioned. That's usually enough to keep it cool enough, but sometimes I open my closet doors to allow for more ventilation on really hot days. But, yeah, I would guess that your CDs are probably fine. They're surprisingly hardy as long as they aren't kept in cars and such. Sometimes cassettes are a little more reliable in cars since they don't get scratched up. For whatever reason, CDs always seem to get scratched in the car even if you're careful with them. That's why it's best to make CD-R copies for the car.
It's not difficult to find the Blues Brothers on VHS at thrift stores. I suspect the DVD isn't too hard to find either. Half Price Books will probably have it as well. I have the Blues Brothers 2000 on VHS as well and I also saw it 20 years ago at the North Oaks dollar theater.
That is a good catch, that does appear to be the Palms Center Montgomery Ward. The tile designs on the first floor exterior and canopies match up with my photos. The side of the store with the palm trees I don't have a good photo to compare it with. I really wish I had a better camera in those days, those photos were terrible.
DeleteThe Christmas displays always give me a good feeling. Sears could still put together a good display even with the limited inventory they had last year.
I think Academy is in much better shape now than they were to begin the year. All of their products have been in high demand this year. Bikes, home gym equipment, guns and ammo, fitness clothing, shoes, fishing gear, grills and grilling accessories, just about every category of product they sell has been in high demand. If they have been unable to turn things around these past 6 months, their business is in deep trouble.
Did the Houston Sports Store at least have copious amounts of neon? I remember the Oshman's Supersports stores having tons of neon even after Sports Authority took over.
That era also had a lot of superstar athletes and little to no scandal in the major sports leagues. Back then the athletes were not scrutinized as much as today and a lot of would be scandals got swept under the rug. A lot of those athletes are still highly regarded from that era.
The CD format is so terrible with picking up scratches like you mentioned. There are certain songs that will not longer play, even after using a disk doctor to buff out the scratches.
One of these days I will want to pick up the movie again. I have several movies that were lost that I intend on picking up again in the future. I think I have a copy of the Blues Brothers 2000 somewhere. It is hard to believe that movie is 20 years old now.
I made a trip to the Deerbrook Sears/Spirit Halloween store. I was able to peek into some parts of the store that were closed off, but I did not attempt to walk behind their curtain to the closed off parts of the store. There is a lot of stained ceiling tiles on the second floor now from what little you can see. All of the Sears signage except for the second floor mall entrance has been pulled down. I also visited the Willowbrook Mall store, but it was after hours. All of the Sears signage is still up and turned on at night. You can peek into the store from some of the entrances. I have about 2 weeks left to visit the inside of the store, I intend on going back to both stores.
It would seem to make sense that the Palms Center Montgomery Ward would have palm trees like what was in that 1950s film. If that Wards wasn't the Palms Center Wards, it was certainly a very good clone of it. Although the phones you've had in recent years take much better photos than the one you had back in 2013, the photos you have from back then are certainly better than not having any photos at all. You were fortunate to be able to capture that building before it was demolished not too long after that. Although the Palms Center is largely a forgotten former shopping mall in Houston (probably because it was an outdoor mall), that Wards appears to have been a special location for them at the time it opened. It was a neat looking building and I'm glad you were able to capture it along with the other Montgomery Ward buildings in town.
DeleteI'm not sure if you saw the recent Sears Layoffs post where a Kmart employee asked why so many people want to film the inside of Kmarts. They mentioned the popularity of Kbloggers like Wallie and Mike K. The post got many replies. I suppose it can be a confusing thing for employees who aren't into retail and/or nostalgia.
I'm glad you were able to make it to the Deerbrook and Willowbrook Spirit stores at the former Sears. I'm not surprised to hear that the Deerbrook store appears to have maintenance issues. It might be one of the reasons why Sears closed it. I know the escalator at the Willowbrook location had become unreliable for several years now and it probably needed a replacement that Lampert didn't want to pay for. I'm going to try to visit these stores, at least the Willowbrook one, and check them out. At least the Sears signs are still up, I wonder if they are still up and lit at the Mall of the Mainland.
You're right that Academy has many of the products people want this year. Back to School was probably a disappointment for them, but otherwise I'm sure sales have to be pretty good. In fact, I think Sears is giving sporting goods some emphasis with what little new inventory they get due to the expected sales in that category. I'm not sure what impact that'll have on Academy's bottom line. If nothing else, Academy ought to be a good takeover candidate if their financial situation can't be solved. Academy does too well on the sales end to go out of business, someone will try to rescue them.
I don't remember the Houston Sports store having neon, but maybe they had a little. It certainly wasn't as impressive looking as an Oshman's Supersports store. Those were really something. In the 1990s, it wasn't unusual to be blown away by the things a new store were doing and that was my experience when I first went to the Oshman's Supersports store near Memorial City Mall. The last store which blew me away was Fry's and that was 20 years ago! But, yeah, the Houston Sports store in many ways looked more like an old 1980s Oshman's on the inside than it looked like a Supersports store. I'm not sure what they were thinking with that.
Blues Brothers 2000 wasn't as good as the original, and it didn't have any retail in it that I can remember, but I don't think it was as bad as the critics made it out to be. Some of it was cheesy, but the music was good in it. The Louisiana Gator Boys band in that movie with with BB King, Eric Clapton, Isaac Hayes, and many other stars was really something and I'm sure you remember them singing Gary US Bonds' New Orleans at the end of the movie.
Buying those movies new on DVD or even Blu-Ray probably wouldn't be too expensive these days I'm guessing, but I'm not sure. If they aren't cheap, thrift stores and Half Price Books are probably good alternatives as long as the DVDs aren't scratched.
I should have gone back to that area to photograph more of the old Montgomery Ward store. But as you say, at least I got some photos. I do need to revisit the Montgomery Ward in Pasadena to see if any parts of that old store remain in the flea market.
DeleteI did read some of that post. Sears Layoffs has gotten mostly quiet lately, but I still check it out from time to time. What a lot of people don't realize is that these stores represent a happy time in our lives with relatives and friends that may no longer be with us. The younger generation will mostly not know the feeling of spending all day at a mall or hours shopping at a Kmart store. For them it will be point, click, and deliver to the house. Even grocery shopping is slowly moving online. Before when that option was not available, it was a hunt to find what you were looking for. Sometimes you lucked out and other times you didn't.
I went to the Willowbrook Spirit today and photographed the interior. There are two good spots, one where you can see into the former tool/lawn and garden areas. The other you can see into the former Men's department and the Sears Thank you for shopping sign is still up. I would love to save that sign from being lost. You can also see the underside of part of the escalators at the corner of their store. Probably only about 20% or less of the store is being used by Spirit, but it is worth checking out.
I hope Academy lasts, it is one of the last full Sporting Goods retailers in the area. Their hours of operation are also more convenient.
I was actually blown away by my first visit to Ollie's this past Summer. It is the first time that a store has really impressive me since probably the NASA Fry's opened as well. Ollie's has so many weird things and their hilarious signage all over the store is great.
I think John Goodman was a good fit for the role he played in The Blues Brothers 2000. It is especially good since he lives in New Orleans. I just wish there had been a little more of an addition to the story than there was in the film.
There are a few shows and movies that I would like to visit Half Price Books to find. Some of those shows are available on YouTube, but the quality is so poor. Buying a DVD version would be well worth being able to see the show how it was intended to be seen.
Revisiting the Pasadena Montgomery Ward would probably be a good idea. With so many former Montgomery Ward buildings in town being torn down in recent years, it's probably best to enjoy one which may still have some Wards stuff up. Of course, it's hard to tell how much might still be up.
DeleteIf you do make another post about the Pasadena Wards, you might want to get some photos of the area which used to be the Pasadena Plaza mall which was across the street from the Wards. This link has some information about that mall. It's truly one of the forgotten malls of the Houston area. It was so forgotten that I didn't even know it existed until I came across that link a few years ago! I believe the Mi Tienda is now on the land the mall used to be on.
It would be great to see the men's and tool departments again at the Willowbrook Mall Sears. I certainly spent a lot of time (and money...or at least SYWR points in the latter years) in those departments over the years. I'll have to try to check that out. I'm not surprised that the vintage sign by the men's department is still there since they'd have to replace the glass if they took it down. If they ever do anything with that building, it might be worth hanging out around there to see if you can dumpster dive and get that sign. Maybe you can convince a construction worker to get it for you.
I've seen some photos of Ollie's on Flickr. You're right about the sayings around the store. They certainly have a sense of humor about themselves. It would be neat to check out one of their stores in person. They seem to be getting closer and closer to Houston so it's probably only a matter of time.
Another couple of stores from the very early 2000s which blew me away, at least a little bit, were The Great Indoors and Expo. Like a lot of stores which have blown me away, they didn't last very long, lol. I suspect the Dallas area Nebraska Furniture Mart might have the stuff to cause us to be blown away.
I shared this with the Albertsons Florida Blogger since I knew he'd love it, but this photo slideshow on the Chronicle website has some awesome pictures of the Lake Jackson Albertsons in 1987 which opened years before Albertsons came to Houston. Also, the first picture in the slideshow shows the Sears Catalog Store which was across the street from the Spring Branch Kmart. Of course, that was the Kmart with the cemetery in the parking lot.
They had 20 years to come up with a good plot for Blues Brothers 2000 and that was the best they could come up with! If they make another Blues Brothers movie now, they wouldn't have any problem finding a dead mall to destroy. I'm sure finding one in 1980 was much more difficult.
Used DVDs are so cheap these days, and even some new ones if you can find them in a bargain bin, that it's absolutely worth it to get your favorites so as long as you have room for them. Even if you don't have room for them, you can just put the DVDs in a binder like you have for CDs and then throw the boxes away. That's not ideal, but at least you have the movie discs.
It's always amazed me how many college aged retail bloggers are into Kmarts. These people have grown up with Lampert era Kmarts and yet they still find them to be amazing. Maybe the youngsters find Kmart to be special for reasons that are different than those of us who remember when Kmart was king of the hill. Although there are a lot of younger retail enthusiasts on social media, those college aged and younger ones will sadly never know what a Montgomery Ward was like or any kind of prime era department store for that matter unless they go to Mexico.
I wish there was more to the former Pasadena Mall. That whole area is very interesting to retail fans with all of the history and remaining structures. I also didn't know about that mall, it was so close to Almeda that it really didn't have much of a chance.
DeleteIf the opportunity presents itself, I will see about that sign. I am glad that I made the most of my trip to the store just as the store closing sale began. On the trip I also took a lot of photos of Willowbrook to make a blog post of the mall. The crowds were finally small enough to take photos of the mall for a blog post. We went when some stores were still open, but a lot were already closed for the day.
Going through that slideshow, I also noticed the Exxon gas prices at 82.9 and 83.9 cents. Albertsons had such a basic design back then, their 90's and 2000 era stores had much more character.
Let's just be glad that there is not a Blues Brothers 2020 movie. There is no shortage of dead malls these days.
I finally popped into a Goodwill the other day for the first time in a long time. It was a small town Goodwill and they had a decent amount of movies and some cassette tapes. I didn't find anything, but I was really there to visit the deadmall that it was attached to. Mall access had recently been closed off to the public, but you could easily see into the old mall from the Goodwill mall entrance.
I am glad to see the younger generations getting into the retail history scene. A lot of the popular YouTube vloggers are a decade or so younger than me and they do a really good job of documenting malls. You are definitely correct about the old school retail experience, very few places here in the USA offer this experience these days. Boscov's and some small downtown stores are the last remaining old school department stores. Sears, JCPenney, Macy's and the rest are so much different and besides an old school name, they don't offer the true department store experience any more.
That part of Pasadena is dripping with retail history. The funny thing is that it's not entirely obvious to anyone, even those of us who know about local retail history, that there are/were so many neat things in that area. In addition to the Montgomery Ward and the mall, that Fiesta right there is the one (I think) which had the expensive painting in it that we read about a few weeks ago. The Kmart down the street, which is now self-storage, is an original 1962 Kmart. The Texas Tapes & Records store which was at that intersection a long time ago was one of the more famous record stores in town.
DeleteI'm glad to see that you were able to get some photos of the Willowbrook Mall. It'll be great to have a post about that mall since it's my local mall and since so many of your readers have history with the mall as well. Let me know if you need any help putting together a post about the mall.
Yeah, gas prices like that are pretty hard to believe even though gas prices are unusually low right now due to the pandemic. In some ways, the current prices of gas might be lower than those 1980s prices given inflation. But, yeah, I'm sure you're happy to see the current low prices of gas. It certainly makes long retail trips a little more affordable!
After talking to Albertsons Florida Blog about those photos, it does seem that the Lake Jackson store looked like what most other Albertsons stores at the time would have looked. A modern Randall's store of the time would have looked more impressive than the Albertsons. A Greenhouse Kroger with Bauhaus signage is a bit more debatable. Some might prefer the Kroger design, but some might prefer the Albertsons. It's crazy to think that Fiesta stores like the Astrodome and Willowchase ones are only a handful of years newer than that Albertsons, but look so much more modern than how that Albertsons looks.
I always thought that the 'Blue & Gray Market' design that Albertsons used with their oldest Houston stores was a bit boring looking. It wasn't unattractive, but it was much more basic than the Randall's of the time or the new Kroger Signature stores of the mid-1990s that had neon signage. Albertsons did up their game with the decor they used in the late 1990s-early 2000s though.
Goodwill sadly closed one of their stores in this area, the 249 and Louetta store which was in an old Eckerd (the Stein Mart in that shopping center will soon be gone as well). Nonetheless, Goodwill still has a lot of stores in that area including the one in the Fiesta shopping center and another one just a couple miles down on Louetta.
I've made a couple of visits to Goodwills in the last couple of months and their stores are as busy as they ever were. They really need to get more cashiers on weekends because the checkout line was about 15 parties deep and was snaking around almost the entire side of the store during one of my visits because they only had one clerk working the checkout during a prime shopping time.
I was recently talking to the person who runs the Northwest Retail Blog about department stores. It's always hard to tell for sure, but I think he was probably born around the time that Montgomery Ward went out of business. As such, he probably has no personal recollection of department stores which sold just about everything and also how neat vintage Wards and Sears stores were. Telling younger people that Wards was like Sears might be misleading because their in-person knowledge of Sears is mostly of that of Lampert-era Sears and Wards was much nicer than that even when they were on the verge of going out of business.
I gave him links to your great posts about the Reforma 222 Sanborns and the Plaza Insurgentes Sears and Woolworth just to give him a little taste of how a middle class department store did look and could work here in modern times. Those Mexican department stores must be really mind-blowing for the younger generations...and even for some of us who are a bit older, lol!
You are right, that Spencer Highway strip in Pasadena was the center of retail at one point in that area. I really wish there was some kind of evidence of the former mall on the Mi Tienda site.
DeleteI am nearly complete with my mall documentation of the Houston area now. I am just missing the Galleria, Baybrook, and First Colony Malls. I may redo a mall or two depending on time. I have another 2-day trip planned in the later part of the year to finish up my backlog of places to visit. I will let you know when I get close to doing Willowbrook Mall. I want to make the Willowbrook Mall and Sears anchor a 2 part post.
Low gas prices are good for most of the nation, but they hurt our economy here in Houston and in our state of Texas. A lot of oil and gas companies cut back employees when prices are low for an extended period of time like they have been in the past few years. The low prices have been helpful though since the price of groceries and other things have been going up rapidly. I just worry about the area having another oil bust like in the 1980's.
Nothing beats those neon era grocery stores, I am glad that a handful still exist. The late 90's and early 2000's 3D and wild color era of grocery store design is harder to find these days.
Goodwill must have expanded to some questionable locations. I am not surprised to see some of their stores close. I have wondered how they can afford some of their prime locations. It is a shame that they are only running with one cashier, I wonder if they were short staffed or just don't care.
This was the last weekend for most of, if not all of the Stein Mart stores. A few shopping centers I have been to had both Stein Mart and Palais Royal. I wonder if any of those former Stage store locations will reopen with the deal you let me know about. The loss of an 800 store chain is huge and when you add Stein Mart, we are looking at over 1,000 junior anchors gone. At this point most of the Sears and Bon-Ton stores that have closed in the past few years are still vacant so I hope that Beall's chain will bring some of the prime locations back.
I just posted the Santa Fe Mexico City Sears and I am working on the 11 story historic Mexico City location for the next post. Those will be a good for the Northwest Retail Blog moderator to check out. The Montgomery Ward video you sent over is a good way to see how retailers of the past were as well. I really enjoyed that video.
Baybrook Mall would be a nice mall to cover for the blog. It has a bit of a unique layout, at least as far as Houston malls go, and is certainly the major retail area for a large number of Houstonians. The Galleria would be nice to cover for the blog since it probably is the definitive mall in town.
DeleteThat Montgomery Ward video really does show what major operations retailers like Sears and Wards were at one time. The video is a great time capsule.
That 11 story Sears in Mexico City is really something. I'll certainly have to share that with other bloggers because I'm sure they'll be amazed by that. Just the idea of a 11 story Sears is kind of mind-blowing.
Speaking of the Northwest Blog author, you may remember that he shared some Rite Aid design blueprints with me showing that they were going to put some planters in their new stores. Well, he recently shared another link with me of photos of a Rite Aid which implemented that design. It's really worth taking a look at. Not only does it have planters, but it also has wood paneling and some very interesting hanging planters that are integrated with department signage and checkout signage. It's a great looking store, IMO, and I really hope some other retailers steal some of those ideas.
Speaking of Rite Aid, the PlazaACME blog posted a new post yesterday showing a Rite Aid in his area which still looks like it's stuck in 1987. That's when the store opened, but the decor looks more like 1981 in many ways. That makes those K&B Rite Aids you did posts about look modern, lol. The same post also has photos of a Kmart in his area which closed in 2019. It's one of the nicest Kmarts I've ever seen. The electronics department even had neon-like lighting. I wonder if it used to be a Sears Essentials, but I don't know. Anyway, I'm sure you'll want to see that Kmart. Here's the link to the post, the Rite Aid and Kmart photos are in the middle of the post.
I think Goodwill opened too many stores in the first half of the 2010s. People like shopping at Goodwill, but they had too many stores too close to one another. Hopefully they can get a right number of stores and then also hire more people to work in the stores to improve the checkout process because it's been pretty bad for quite some time.
Maybe we discussed this earlier, but Goodwill is starting to convert some of their locations into clearance stores. I know the Fuqua & Sabo store is one of these. At those stores, they roll out bins of clothes that wouldn't sell at their regular stores and people fill their bags with what they want. The bags are then weighed and people pay for their clothes by the pound. It doesn't sound very appealing to me, but I suppose it might be a good way to get a lot of clothes for cheap for people who aren't too picky.
I'm not sure if Bealls Florida is planning on expanding now that they have all the Stage names. Some Burkes Outlets in this area, Seabrook and Cleveland come to mind, were in shopping centers with Palais Royals so there won't be expansion there I wouldn't think. Burkes Outlets have been in this area for at least 15-20 years, but it just seems to me that they have not gained the popularity that Ross and others have. Perhaps switching to a better known name like Palais Royal might help them, but I don't know. There was a Burkes Outlet in the Willowchase Fiesta shopping center for a while, but that closed and I'm not even sure where the next nearest location is to me.
You're right about gas prices and the impact on the local economy. The local economy might be a bit more diverse now than it was in the 1980s, but oil is still the engine that powers Houston and other cities in this region.
Since I live in the Houston area, I figured the blog needs to have complete Houston area coverage.
DeleteThat new redesign at the Rite Aid is pretty awesome. I like how they mention old meets new in one of the signs. It looks like the pharmacy area is more wide open to try and create a more customer friendly atmosphere. Many pharmacies are covered up heavily with only small areas open to see the back. A design like that would not be good for the areas where pharmacies are robbed, but it is a nice design.
The Rite Aid and Kmart in the second post were worth checking out as well. The Rite Aid has some elements of the stores in Louisiana that were opened after a K&B closed. The Kmart electronics department is unlike anything I have seen. It is a shame that the store is now closed.
I did read about those new goodwill stores. It seems like it is worth a shot before they give up on a location. 2020 is not the best time to open up a store like this, but it is a neat idea.
There are Burke's Outlet stores sprinkled around town mostly are in the outer communities. Porter Texas has one and further up North in Lufkin and Marshall.
You are right about diversity in the economy. The area did not hurt too badly during the oil drop in 2015. A lot of oil and gas jobs were lost during that period, but unemployment stayed well below the national average at the time.
One of the major sectors of the Houston economy aside from oil & gas is the medical field. I'm not sure how the medical field is doing these days with the pandemic. On one hand, you'd think that they'd be doing well with the unfortunate demand put on hospitals, but perhaps the costs of operating during a pandemic are quite high as well. I'm not sure, but I'd have to guess that the medical field is a bright spot for the economy if nothing else even if it's coming under an unfortunate situation.
DeleteIt will be nice to have coverage of all the Houston malls. Some malls may seem more interesting than others, but every mall is/was a local mall to someone in town and I'm sure people would like to see the history of these malls preserved.
You make a good point about the design of the pharmacy part of that Rite Aid. I didn't even give that much thought initially. Given the poor reviews a lot of these pharmacy stores get, perhaps showing more of the pharmacy might help customers see everything that's going on and might help them to see the hard work which goes into filling prescriptions. OTOH, it might not be great for security, but I suppose it works in some areas. The fact that this store has a sitting area kind of like a Starbucks probably shows it's in a better area, but I'm not sure. I'm also not sure how many people will go to a pharmacy for some free Wi-Fi, but it looks like Rite Aid is counting on it.
With a Rite Aid that modern existing, it's odd that Rite Aid would also have some stores which make the typical Kmart look modern, lol. This question came up recently on another blog and I wasn't sure how to answer it. Did Rite Aid ever have stores in Texas? I can't remember them, but maybe K&B had some Texas stores that were turned into Rite Aids. I'm not sure. I know we did have Rite Aid's RediClinics at some HEBs up until very recently, but those aren't full Rite Aids of course.
It was shocking to see a Kmart with neon like that! Just imagine if Kmart used that design at all their stores instead of keeping the Walkman woman up for years. Maybe they'd be much better off than they are. Neon aside, the rest of the store looked nice and organized. That Kmart certainly wasn't the typical Kmart.
I think there might be a Burkes Outlet in Spring where the relatively new Academy is (which used to be a very retro Greenhouse Kroger until it closed in 2013, Academy kept the Kroger cube sign and put their own logo on it). At least there used to be one there. It seems like Burkes Outlet does better in the more remote outer communities as you say and that was Stage's bread and butter locations. Hopefully Bealls Florida-Burkes Outlet can gain some more traction now that they don't have to compete against Stage Stores.
You're right, that Goodwill clearance store concept with people digging around in bins doesn't sound very hygienic here in the era of social distancing. It might be bad timing for Goodwill to try that now, but we'll see if it'll work.
I have heard mixed things about the medical field. A lot of private practices and specialists have been hurt by the pandemic. Emergency and testing services have had the bulk of the work from the pandemic from what I have mostly heard.
DeleteRite Aid management might not want people dropping in just for the free Wi-Fi. Maybe they could open up a cafe in the store, a lot of Supermarkets have done that over the years and it seems to work.
I think Nacogdoches had a Rite Aid briefly after the transition but I can't remember for sure. I know Marshall and Nacogdoches had K&B stores in the 90's. I know there was talk of Rite Aid coming to Texas around the time of the CVS acquisition of Eckerd.
It seems like most of the Kmart stores that lasted into mid 2019 or later had that newer solid red design throughout the store. McAllen was the only example I personally saw, but there have been a ton of Kmart closing videos online. Thankfully the closings at Sears and Kmart have slowed down to almost zero. I think only 1 store is currently in the process of closing down. Sadly the combined company is down to about 100 stores now, not including hometown stores.
You are right about the Burke's, you can see it clearly from that Academy. We have shopped off and on at Burke's over the years. It is usually less busy than Ross, Burlington, and Marshall's/TJ Maxx. I prefer not to shop at those busier closeout stores because the finds are few and far between. Store cleanliness is also an issue with the exception of some Marshall's/TJ Maxx locations. Either way there seems to be room for more Burke's Outlets especially with all of the empty junior anchors spaces around town now.
I can see a lot of bugs, insects, and animal droppings making their way into those bins as well. It just sounds like it could be a nasty experience.
I did some searching online and I do see some references in old business listings to Rite Aid in both Nacogdoches and Marshall. I'm not entirely sure if those listings are reliable though. I know those can be iffy. I'm not sure for how long those stores might have stayed as Rite Aids. I see two references to Rite Aids in Nacogdoches, both of which are near Krogers which are still around and look very retro, and also the Marshall reference is in a retro Kroger shopping center. All three of those Krogers have modern design packages, but in very old buildings.
DeleteMaybe Rite Aid thinks people Wi-Fi lounge users will also buy snacks and soft drinks from the store. Perhaps they can set up a microwave for people to heat up TV dinners they purchased from the store. I know I went to a small supermarket in Canada which had such a thing. Having a cafe isn't a bad idea if they have room, but I'm not sure how they made room for sitting areas in the first place.
Now that you mention it, it does seem that most of the remaining Kmarts that I've seen before do have some of Kmart's latest renovations. You're also right that Sears does not seem to have any mass store closings happening right now. That's a good sign, but I wonder if the inventory situation has improved. If not, I don't see how those stores will stick around.
I've actually never even been in a Burkes Outlet even though there was one near the Willowchase Fiesta like I mentioned. I really don't shop at closeout clothing stores very often. At least I have not since the 1990s at least. I did shop at Stein Mart if you want to count that, but Stein Mart had a much better store experience than the Rosses of the world. They were even better than some regular department stores. That's pretty sad to say!
I do stop at Ross and Marshalls/TJMaxx type stores every now and then when I need something like a tie because they have pretty good prices on stuff like that and the quality is good. Those stores can be total chaos at times with merchandise all over the place and customers everywhere. Ross is worse than the Marshalls/TJMaxx stores as you say, but neither offer a particularly dignified shopping experience. Montgomery Ward may have not had the most stylish clothing around, and they probably weren't the absolutely cheapest option, but I miss buying durable clothes at a fair price where the racks are well-sorted and the store experience was peaceful. Sears wasn't too bad in these regards either and I certainly bought a lot of clothes from there in recent times. The prices couldn't be beat with SYWR promotions.
That's some good information about the medical field. Telemedicine is growing and the pandemic has probably led to a big growth in people visiting doctors virtually for less critical visits. It might be convenient, but small practices probably don't have the technology that bigger ones do. Also, from what I've seen, telemedicine allows clinics to have remote doctors/nurses in places where labor is cheaper instead of having doctors who live in the community where the patients are. Obviously, emergency care and such are probably doing well under these unfortunate circumstances.
Here's one for our retail movie library. Do you remember the 1991 Movie Career Opportunities which was about a Target janitor and filmed at an Atlanta Target store (a former Richway-turned-Target)? The movie was really, really bad, lol, but I just thought of it yesterday for the first time in a long time. Here's a trailer for it, the movie does show a lot of the Target at the very least. That's the only good thing which can be said about it! It seems the movie was filmed in 1989 so the look of the Target would be from then.
I remember the Nacogdoches K&B/Rite-aid was on the East side of University Street. I am not sure but I may have video footage from one of my 1990's visits to the area. It is very possible that the stores were converted for a short time before ultimately closing.
DeleteIf anything the Rite-aid cafe would be an interesting place to people watch. It just doesn't seem like a calm place to relax.
As you already have heard, our last Sears is closing in January 2021. I posted more about our Sears closing on the other comment. Baton Rouge and Mesquite will be the nearest Sears stores to us at about 4 hours away. I may try to venture out to Baton Rouge to document the mall and Sears in January.
I have gotten closer to finishing up the Houston area malls for the blog. The Galleria is the final one I need to complete the Houston list.
Burke's is a newer, more modern version of Stein Mart. It is a closeout store, but they are maintained well. I would say they are about equal to TJ Maxx on quality and store cleanliness. Ross and Burlington are usually trashed so I avoid those places. Sears clothing is pretty bad these days. Most of the t-shirts I bought last year have already shrunk and had to be donated. My jeans from Sears have held up well, but they are the name brand ones.
The emergency clinics have been advertising their rapid Covid tests, but those are not free by any means. Depending on the insurance carrier you have, the tests can be as low as $50 to $300+ without insurance. I am sure a lot of money can be made once the vaccines roll out in the near future. I am sure that people are a lot more cautious of going to an emergency clinic these days if they are not really, really sick.
I have not seen that movie, but I will check the trailer out. Target is one of the retailers that has not been a draw for many retail bloggers. I guess it is because Target has been a strong company and continues to do well. Once a chain starts declining like Kmart, we take notice and sometimes overdo the documentation of those stores. I did notice the Dickinson Target is also still a Super Target after being renovated. I am glad these two stores are still Super Target locations, now I wonder of any more are still left in the area.
I will combine my post about the Pasadena Sears with this post. Thanks for confirming that the store is closing. It's very sad to hear that the last Sears in the Houston area is closing, but this is hardly surprising news. I'm glad that you were able to cover the store though. That will certainly make for a good blog post.
DeleteThe Cortana Mall is always an interesting visit. I'm sure you'll enjoy visiting that once again. I can't imagine the Sears there will last much longer.
The Houston retail news which is catching attention elsewhere in the country is the announced closing of the Montrose Kroger, the 'Disco Kroger', in January. That was announced a few days ago and then last night, there was a fire at the Disco Kroger. Now I'm not even sure if it'll stay open until January. Meanwhile, Kroger is having labor issues in Houston and articles are indicating that Houston Kroger employees might authorize a strike due to conflict over changes in medical care and bonuses. I remember when Kroger employees here in the 1980s went on strike. It's not too often that we see picketing workers here in Texas, but I do remember that pretty vividly. We may see that again. Anyway, the store closures, possible strikes, and the fire are all rather strange and one has to wonder if they might be related.
Earlier, we discussed a Walgreens in my area which downsized. Well, yet another Walgreens near me has downsized. This time, they stayed in their building, but part of the store has become an independent doctor's office. The Walgreens remains in basically an L-shaped part of the store. It's possible that many Walgreens in this area might get downsized, but I don't know.
I'm not surprised to hear that Sears clothing isn't holding up for you. It seemed that a lot of their shirts and such have become Kmart quality since the bankruptcy. Sears is offering their customers less and less these days. Like you, I bought a lot of jeans from Sears about a year ago, but those are name brand jeans so they should be as good as jeans sold from other stores.
That Rite Aid video would be great if you could find it. I know many other retail bloggers would love to see that. It's great that you were able to cover all the malls except for The Galleria. That might have to wait until after Christmas or else it might be too crowded even with all that's going on this year.
There are a few 1990s Targets across the country with neon which have not been renovated. Some of these have caught the attention of retail bloggers, but as you say, Target certainly isn't as covered as Kmart. Regardless, the images of the store from the Career Opportunities movie are great and it's worth seeing for that alone. I didn't realize that the Dickinson Super Target is still open, but there is limited grocery competition in that area. Of course, there is a Walmart across the street.
What about the Sears stores in Austin or San Antonio? Have they closer already?
DeleteThere was a K&B that was converted to a Rite-Aid in Nacogdoches. I believe it closed around the late 90s.
DeleteYes the last Austin store closed late last year and the final store at Rolling Oaks Mall in San Antonio closed in early 2020. The only full sized stores in Texas are in Mesquite at Town East Mall and in El Paso at Cielo Vista Mall.
DeleteThanks for the clarification Phudman. I wonder why K&B or Rite-aid never expanded outside of the handful of stores in East Texas.
DeleteI still wonder how Sears kept that Pasadena location open as long as they did. It seemed like as soon as Christmas passed last year, they gave up. It is too bad that Sears management didn't even bother to order holiday items for 2020 at any of their stores.
DeleteThat Disco Kroger certainly has an interesting nickname. Thankfully the closing will not leave that area of town without grocery options. A strike would be devastating right now for any grocery store. Grocery stores are once again dealing with shortages and they need all of the employees they can get to keep shelves restocked.
Walgreens management is smart to downsize some locations and rent out space to medical professionals. Not only will that bring extra pharmacy business, but it also provides extra income for the company to rent out the space.
The sad thing about the Sears and Kmart shirts are that I still have a weeks worth of shirts that are still brand new. I could have probably invested in slightly more expensive shirts that would have lasted longer for less. This will be the third set of t-shirts that I have gone through in three years. My sports and other various branded shirts don't shrink.
I am going to try and go to the Galleria early to avoid crowds. My trips to First Colony and Baybrook were early in the day during the week, so I was able to get good photos. It would take some digging to find any video footage from that area. I am pretty sure that I have some footage from the 90's somewhere.
That whole stretch of I-45 is torn up. I dropped by that area to visit some stores a couple of weeks ago. The Super Target has the new sign like they have at Pasadena so I assume the interior has been renovated as well. I would love to see a 90's era Target, they are becoming rare since the company has the goal of renovating all stores with the latest design.
We heard rumors earlier that Sears was only able to liquidate about ~7 stores at a time due to budget constraints. Given that, I wonder if Sears knew they were going to close the Pasadena store months ago, but could not do it then because of the need to liquidate Seritage locations and such. That might explain the poor condition of the Pasadena Sears even compared to the lousy state of all US Sears stores at this time.
DeleteThat's a shame about the Kmart and Sears shirts. Sears did sell some very nice shirts, but a lot of those went away around the bankruptcy and were replaced with very shoddy feeling Kmart-type clothes. Oh well, at least they were usually priced about right though and that's not even factoring the usual SYWR bonuses.
The one good thing about the pandemic is that it is making it easier to photograph malls since the crowds are a little less than what they usually are.
Have you ever been to the East Texas town of Henderson? I was poking around East Texas on Google Maps the other day and saw that they have a very vintage looking Kroger there in what appears to be an old Safeway. Kroger is still using 1970s Safeway signage on the outside of the store and the interior seems to have some vintage bits in it too. Usually Krogers aren't kept that vintage. Also, the interior of the Burger King in Henderson looks like it's straight out of 1991, lol.
I was also looking at Marshall. Right behind the vintage Kroger Signature (I think the Rite Aid/K&B was next to the Kroger) was a very vintage Whataburger with the original 1960s A-frame design. Unfortunately, it seems like it was demolished and replaced with a modern Whataburger in late 2019, but Google Maps still has a shot of the old Whataburger. I had no idea there were any Whataburgers left in 2019 which looked like that. I wonder if any remain. Here is a link to it on Google.
NW Retail and I were discussing this the other day, but Safeway/Albertsons has opened some new Tom Thumb (Randall's) stores in the Dallas area in former The Fresh Market locations. These stores have interiors which are a mix between the latest Safeway is using and what TFM was using. These stores are exceptionally nice. Here's a link to one of them on Google, check out the photos on this one. The 'Wow' factor is high on this one for sure!
You're right about I-45 in the League City area. Speaking of that area, I was around the Mall of the Mainland Sears recently and noticed that not only are the Sears signs still up, but it looked like the gates on the doors were up as well. I'm not sure what is or isn't going on there.
It is crazy that Sears does not have enough money to liquidate stores. I guess the cost of liquidation services went up during the beginning of the Covid lockdowns. Nearly 1,000 Stage and Stein Mart stores were closing all at once, so that probably made liquidation more expensive. The fact that the stores barely have any inventory does not help either, there has to be enough merchandise for the liquidators to profit. I am pretty sure that the Pasadena Sears had gotten a large delivery of items to add to the liquidation sale. I have to go back and see what else was added, the smaller items were in Home Depot boxes. The larger appliances may have just come from the second floor.
DeletePretty much everything was already on sale at Sears prior to the store closing sale. If you were unsure about the prices, they still had a couple of working price check machines.
I did get some really good photos once we started venturing out again in the Summer. The last 3 new malls I documented, were documented early in the day to avoid crowds. I added the Galleria to my mall portfolio on Monday, but the crowds were still pretty heavy.
I passed through Henderson twice that I can remember. I just drove through and did not stop. It sounds like things don't change very often with those older store designs. There is a vintage Kroger in Baytown that has the same style of storefront with the pebble exterior walls. It is listed as Old Baytown Kroger on North Alexander.
Whataburger has been replacing locations so fast these days. I miss the older design with the Blue, now it is just orange and white. Marshall and that stretch of I-20 seems to be an up and coming area.
Most of the Fresh Market locations here in Houston were not very good. I have been to a couple of Tom Thumb stores in Florida, but they were much smaller than the ones in Dallas. That store you sent over certainly looks very nice. I never visited a Fresh Market, but I saw several photos while researching a job with them years ago. I am glad that the job didn't work out, the stores barely lasted here in Houston. The remodeled Randall's Kingwood store had some of those same design elements, but this store looks very dark and relaxing. The floors and lighting had also been redone at that store to brighten up the store.
It is sad to see what happened to the Mall of the Mainland after they stabilized and revitalized the property. Both Sears and Palais Royal left, so nearly all retail is gone.
I did get a chance to visit the Fry's on NASA Rd. last week as well. It looks like they are moving everything from the left side of the store over to the right. Just about every shelf and most of the floor was empty in that side of the store. Shelving units were being taken apart and shopping carts full of merchandise or shelving parts were all over the right side of the store. In the center of the store most of the aisles were full, but there are still a lot of gaps. Boxed appliances, TV's and boxed computers were in the back corner where computers used to be on display. A lot of brands I have never heard of are what I saw on the shelves. A couple of items I was interested in, had bad reviews online so I left without buying anything. The store closed at 7pm, but an employee walked up to me at about 10 minutes after 7pm to tell me they were about to close for the night. The store hours on the front door still show 9pm as the closing time. Anyway, I took a lot of photos and even some video of the store. I am curious to see what happens next to the store. Maybe they are going to sublease the space to another retailer.
Part I:
DeleteThat is a good point about liquidators having their hands full after the start of the pandemic and their prices potentially going up. I think the limited roll-out of Sears liquidations started even before the pandemic, but I'm sure the cash crunch is really hitting Sears now. That's also a good point about Sears not having enough to liquidate in their stores as it is and the liquidators needing to bring in inventory from other stores to make it a viable job.
The Pasadena Sears was the newest and, in many ways, the nicest Sears in town. The Woodlands Mall Sears was only slightly older. It's a shame that it slid into such poor shape especially in terms of inventory. It seemed inevitable that the store would close after seeing the pictures you took of it a few months ago.
I have a family member who was interested in a new vacuum cleaner for Christmas and I saw that Kenmore models still rate very well in Consumer Reports along with the common Shark models. I went to the Sears website to see if the Kenmores could be ordered, but they had very little left there. Just a model or two and I'm not even sure if those were in stock. OTOH, it seems that multiple other big name retailers like Kohl's and Lowe's now have Kenmore vacuums so it's actually easier to get them from places other than Sears.
I remember seeing that Baytown Kroger before on Google Maps. One evening during the lockdown, I spent a lot of time looking at the Krogers in East Houston and in Louisiana and that's one which really stuck out. There are many vintage Krogers in East Texas/Louisiana with odd designs which could be former locations of other grocers. Louisiana has a lot of new Kroger Marketplace stores, but also some old Krogers as well. There's a very old Kroger in Bossier City I think which still has an enclosed produce area with earthtone bricks, tiles, and mirrors on the wall like you would have seen in the 1970s. Given how much effort Kroger puts into remodels these days, it's a bit shocking that those stores have been left vintage.
The relatively new Kroger in Humble near Deerbrook Mall is one of the strangest Krogers in the sense that it opened and still has what has been referred to as the 'Food 4 Less' colorful decor usually used at Kroger's Food 4 Less discount division in California and also sometimes used in older Greenhouse type stores. I've surprised some Kroger fans by posting photos of that location in other blogs because it's pretty shocking to them that Kroger used that design in a new store near a successful mall.
I like those 1980s/1990s style A-frame Whataburgers. There's still a couple near me by the old Jones Rd. Kmart and by the Willowbrook Mall Best Buy. Hopefully those stay around. I figured those 1960s A-frames were long gone, but I suppose at least the Marshall one was around until 2019. I read that Whataburger does not like using the A-frames now because shopping center developers don't like the A-frame design (I suppose they think it's too vintage) and they also don't like the bright orange colors so those are toned down on the outside of new stores.
Part II:
DeleteHouston has seem many grocers come into town over the years with great fanfare and then leave in failure very soon afterwards. The Fresh Market is certainly one of those! Meanwhile, the one remaining Rice Epicurean left after TFM bought the rest of the Rices still remains in business. That's one small link to Houston's past.
On the topic of Houston/Texas supermarket history, I was recently reading some old Texas Monthly magazines online and I came across a 1988 issue which had a lot about Texas grocery stores including an article about the history of HEB and another article about Houston's high-end grocers at the time (Jamail's, Randall's, and Rice Epicurean). The Randall's article is nice because it specifically mentions the FM 1960 & Champions Forest location which is still around and is my local Randall's (and probably the closest one to you as well now). It mentioned the 2nd story balcony which has long since been closed and walled over, but I do remember it. The HEB article is very long and spans multiple parts of the magazine, but is very interesting. I like how it discusses HEB's multi-tier pricing by location, which they still use in Houston at least, and how HEB fought off Kroger in San Antonio. It's worth a read if you get the time. Here is a link to it, the grocery articles start at page 102.
I really like the dark wooden beams over the checkout stands at the Dallas area Tom Thumb linked earlier. That might have been a TFM element, I'm not sure, but Safeway/Albertsons did well by leaving that in and integrating it into their decor. That's a very luxurious feeling store.
Thanks for the Fry's update, those photos and video should be great. I can't say I'm surprised at all that they are consolidating the store into one side. It would make sense for them to sub-lease the other side, but this might not be the best time to try to lease retail space. The quality of the few products Fry's was selling during my last visits not too long back did seem iffy to me so I don't blame you for passing on them. The store was also closing at 7pm during my last visit in around September and that made it difficult for me to get there.
I recently visited the Altex computer store near me to purchase a few computer and A/V supplies I could not find earlier at Fry's. That store is about 20% or less the size of a Fry's, but they probably have more inventory than Fry's has now. Their shelves were still mostly full and they had good quality merchandise. Altex used to be very expensive, but their prices are much more reasonable now (some of the things I purchased was cheaper than Amazon) and they have customer service similar to something like an Ace Hardware. It's a good combo and it might be worth going there for computer needs if you can't get to MicroCenter. Altex has very limited hours these days though. It's even more limited than Fry's.
I'm not sure if you heard, but General Wireless sold RadioShack last week to a company in Florida who has been buying out the rights to retailers like Pier 1. The new owner plans on keeping RadioShack going as an online store and it seems they'll continue to supply the franchise stores as well. The RadioShack website was taken down this week in order for it to be relaunched with new inventory from the new owner. I'm not sure what the differences will be, but it seems that RadioShack will be around for a while longer as an online store at least. I hope they still keep the vintage t-shirts!
Running a liquidation sale is expensive from a labor standpoint. I am sure that some employees make overtime, the increased sales and constantly moving merchandise needs extra employees to manage the sale. All of the Sears making moments matter era signage was being taken down on the night before the sale so some old permanent signage is visible. The Pasadena Sears was beginning to have maintenance issues, leaking ceilings, broken elevator, peeling wallpaper.
DeleteI am not going to document the Pasadena Sears store like I did the North Shepherd store. I was able to document the store differently since I visited several times in 2020 before the store began the closing sale. I documented the North Shepherd store nearly every week during the closing sale, it was overkill. I may go in this weekend since I heard the fixtures are now out for sale.
The Pasadena Sears had a handful of vacuums for sale that had been moved to empty space in the tool department. There were a lot of parts still left once the sale started, I don't know how many are left at this point.
I did not know the Kroger in Humble has a unique design package. I have only been there twice when the store first opened, but it does look very different almost like an HEB inside. With a chain as large as Kroger, there will probably be some holdouts that have missed remodels. As we have seen with even Walmart, some stores still hold onto the older designs and miss an update or two.
Most if not all of the old Whataburgers have been replaced near me. I think the old design was what helped them standout in some areas. The fact that Whataburger is no longer owned by Texans, we will see even more changes in the future.
The grocery scene in Houston and across the USA is ever changing. I don't see how the higher end specialty grocers such as Randall's, Rice, and even Whole Foods are going to survive this current economic crisis. I know a lot of grocers have their cash rooms and security offices on an upper level in the store. Did the balcony overlook the inside or outside of Randall's?
When I arrived at the Fry's location music was playing. Then around 6:30 or so it cut off. No announcements were made, but I did notice the quietness. I wonder if the employees know what is going on behind the scenes. I overheard a lady ask if they are closing, and they said they were moving the store items around. Besides facemasks and Covid sanitation products, Fry's is a useless store in 2020. You could say Sears and Kmart as useless as well, in the few places where they are still limping along.
Altex sounds like a good alternative to Microcenter. When we went to the Hill Country back in October, I saw a few locations. As far as I know the 290 location is their only one here in the Houston area.
Hopefully the Radio Shack brand will stay alive in the US. If anything, we can cross the border to find Radio Shack if they leave the US. I wonder if this is the same company that owns the rights to fallen department store names such as Foley's and several others.
The Pasadena Sears had a nice exterior design and great architecture in my opinion.
DeletePart I:
DeleteLiquidation sales are quite labor intensive with all the moving of inventory, signage changes, on the fly pricing of fixtures, and so forth. I'm not at all surprised to hear that the Pasadena store was starting to have maintenance issues. It seems like all the other Sears stores in the area, except for maybe the Mall of the Mainland store, were starting to have issues as well. The Willowbrook Mall location was not as bad off, but I've documented the escalator issues there a number of times.
I think it makes sense to document the Pasadena store with the pictures of the place before the liquidation and then perhaps some liquidation photos as well. The terrible state of inventory at the store leading up to the liquidation was truly remarkable and worth documenting.
It crossed my mind that December 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the announcement that Montgomery Ward was closing. With the last Houston Sears store closing right near that anniversary, maybe it would be a good idea to make a post discussing your thoughts about the demise of Wards 20 years later and your thoughts about Sears' last couple of years. Maybe you can include some of your favorite Wards and Sears photos from your old posts and also perhaps preview some of the Sears closing posts you'll be posting in the future. It's just an idea, and I'm sure you have many other posts you're ready to get uploaded, but it might be interesting to get some of your thoughts about the official end of these types of department stores in Houston.
The overall design of the Humble Kroger is quite similar to other recent Krogers in that it uses a warehouse-like design like HEB, but the color schemes and designs for the department signs is typically not used on new Krogers. It's typically used at older Greenhouse Krogers, but at least one 2000s era Kroger Signature store, the one on 249 & Antoine, was remodeled with that design. This Greenhouse Kroger on Veterans Memorial is a more typical use of that decor package. It actually looks really good in that store, IMO, and I prefer the colorful look to some of the other more boring designs Kroger more commonly uses these days. Some of the designs are really quite bad.
Part II:
DeleteThe lone Rice Epicurean, and many of the remaining Houston Randall's stores, are in what could be considered the 'blue blood' neighborhoods of Houston. They're in areas that are quite wealthy, have been wealthy for decades, and will probably be wealthy for a long time to come. I suppose their business models work in those areas especially since it's hard for competitors to move into those areas due to the cost and lack of room (though HEB has been building some urban stores shoehorned into smaller plots of land).
When I went to the Town & Country Randall's earlier this year, the store and parking lot was packed. I don't think I had ever seen a Randall's that busy even during their glory years. That seems to be an important store in that wealthy area even though Kroger and HEB are over near I-10.
The balcony at the FM 1960 & Champions Forest Randall's was in the back of the store above the meats and such. That area has been walled off and there is now a clock where the balcony was. There might have been a balcony at the front of the store as well, but I don't remember that if it existed. Like you said, that's usually where the grocery offices are if anything is up there.
I think grocers are better equipped to maintain business during the pandemic than other retailers since people staying home more means they are eating out less and need to buy more groceries. Since online grocery shopping mostly goes through the big grocers anyway, at least at this point, that's probably not as much of a determent to them. Having said all of that, the cost of sanitizing the stores, product shortage, and so forth are probably hurting them some, but just about all B&M retailers have that problem right now.
Fry's is indeed quite useless now just like Sears and Kmart. Fry's doesn't even have many electronics basics like basic cables and such. About all they are good for are for masks, sanitizer, perfume, and blank optical media, lol. I don't even think of Fry's anymore as being a viable place for electronics and electronic accessories aside from blank discs. Similarly, Sears is a mediocre, to put it lightly, retailer here in 2020 for just about everything including appliances which is supposedly their strong point.
Altex has multiple locations in San Antonio, but they only have one location each in Austin, Houston, and Corpus Christi. They just built a second location in the Dallas area so maybe Houston will get a second store at some point. I guess I'm lucky that I'm close to the one location they do have here. It's odd that they came here about 20 years ago, seemingly still do well, but have not expanded. Some small private retailers are careful not over-expand and spread themselves too thin. MicroCenter is like that, there are only a handful of locations across the US even with all their success and they expand very slowly. Fry's was the same way as well, but things are not working out as well for them as they are for MicroCenter and Altex.
I don't think the new RadioShack owner is affiliated with the company that bought Foley's, but I'm not sure. The RadioShack owner also has Pier 1 and Linens-n-Things. If you want to do your Christmas shopping at RadioShack, LNT, and Pier 1 this year, you can do so online, lol. The new RadioShack website launched a couple days ago. The inventory doesn't look much different than before, but they must be using the same website software now as the other brands they own because it looks similar. Unfortunately, it looks like they don't have the t-shirts anymore.
It was part of their final store modernizations. Stores built after 1995 I believe had a similar store design inside and outside. The interiors of the older stores were remodeled at the same time.
DeleteThe store design upgrades coincidentally happened at around the same time as the Big K rollout at Kmart.
Part 1
DeleteI like the idea of rolling in the Montgomery Ward closing anniversary with the Sears closing. There are so many similarities with Sears and Montgomery Ward it would be fitting. I need to go back and check in on how things are going at Sears. I have gotten some updates from one of my Discord buddies. I am very disappointed that upper management at Sears didn't give the employees a chance to save the store. Even during the Christmas season last year that store was still very busy. The fact that inventory stopped coming in at sustainable levels and whole parts of the store emptied out is what killed the store off. I know the odds of traditional Sears stores surviving through 2021 is slim, but this location was way more empty than others I have seen online.
That Kroger is a lot more colorful than a lot of their stores which were recently remodeled. I have also noticed that Kroger management is replacing open air refrigerators with closed door refrigerators throughout the stores. The meats and small middle row coolers are still open, but the remaining coolers have been replaced. The doors on these coolers feel cheap and get in the way when multiple people are in the same area. I am not sure if all stores are getting these coolers, but I am not a fan of them.
Part 2
DeleteI guess the more expensive grocers are a status symbol in those wealthy neighborhoods. The Memorial City area has gone up in value tremendously over the years, so the cost to build a new grocery store is probably not worth it unless they charge high prices.
A lot of grocery chains were already investing in their online ordering business, so they were well prepared to keep sales going even with reduced store capacity.
Speaking of Fry's, I posted my video on YouTube of my walkthrough a few weeks ago. Here is the link to the video.
https://youtu.be/YcuAAG7QzeE
I guess we could refer to Fry's/Sears and others as ghost retailers. They have the name of a once great company, but they are a shell of what they once were. Anyone that has shopped at a Sears or Fry's in the past year will more than likely not go back, it is just that bad.
I keep forgetting Altex is around since we rarely drive on that stretch of 290. It has been a couple of years since I went to Micro Center as well. The upper management of those chains was smart to build smaller stores and strategically places locations in large metro areas.
I wonder what happened to the inventory of Radio Shack t-shirts. Maybe they will wind up on the shelves of Ollie's or Big Lots in the near future. I am glad to see these older retailers continue to exist, even if it is mostly by name only. The Service Merchandise site finally came back online recently after being down for several months. I wonder how many people who shopped there know that the site is active again.
Montgomery Ward and Sears were kind of like Pepsi and Coca-Cola during their best years. When you thought of one, you also thought of the other. It's been a bit different in the last 20 years since Wards has not been around, but essentially both retailers are now dead. I'm not counting the Wards catalog since that is a completely different operation than the old Wards. Of course, the death of Wards was quite different from the death of Sears. Wards was still a nice place to shop even in their last days.
DeleteAlthough the current Montgomery Ward is not at all related to the old Wards, the current RadioShack is pretty much a continuation of the old RadioShack. It's great that they are still around, but I wish we had a franchise store or RadioShack Express in town so I can buy electronic parts if I need them. I'm not sure what happened to the t-shirts. They're all listed as being out of stock. If they sold all of them, I wonder why they did not order more.
I was over near the NASA Fry's the other day. I thought about stopping in, but I didn't see what the point would be. I would probably feel the same way about Sears. They just don't have much of anything. Even the stuff in Fry's weekly ads are rarely in stock. That is a great video though. It's sad that you were in some prime spots of the store, especially up front at the end of the video, and there was nobody else in the shot. That was pretty much my experience when I was there a couple months back.
Those closed in coolers are probably more energy efficient, but they can be annoying. Sometimes the windows fog up and it's hard to see in them. Also, like you say, sometimes the doors feel cheap. After the Cypresswood & 249 Kroger reopened after being flooded during Harvey, it didn't take long for at least one of the milk case doors to shatter from probably being low-quality.
I'd imagine that those who live in those 'blue blood' neighborhoods of Houston probably still expect some of those higher-end, luxury services from grocers which have mostly gone away at places like Kroger and HEB. For example, it used to be expected that the baggers would take your groceries out to your car and would load them in for shoppers, but that seemed to fade away in the early 2000s. I wouldn't be surprised if Rice Epicurean still does that. Also, maybe their bakers and butchers will do things that those at big chain stores won't. Anyway, on the topic of old school grocery service, here's a great Randall's commercial from 1988 which was recently uploaded to YouTube. I liked the jingle Randall's used at that time. Maybe you should include that in one of your upcoming Randall's posts.
The investments into online grocery shopping are paying off big for Kroger and Albertsons/Safeway during the pandemic. I suspect the same is true for HEB as well, but that hasn't made national headlines. On the topic of online shopping, so many people want to shop online for Christmas this year, but the problem is that shipping departments at various national retailers and also the carriers like the USPS & UPS are absolutely swamped right now. I'm sure employees needing to take time off if they test positive isn't helping either. It's entirely possible that if someone has not ordered their gifts yet, they won't arrive on time even if they pay for expedited shipping. That could be a real boost for B&M retail during the homestretch for gift shopping.
I remember how packed the Willowbrook Mall Sears was last Christmas during the last weekend before Christmas even though people were writing off B&M retail even then. I really soaked in that experience as I knew I'd probably never experience that again at Sears. Unfortunately, that proved to be true!
The Coke and Pepsi comparison is a good one for Sears and Montgomery Ward. I still get Montgomery Ward catalogs from time to time, it is always a cool thing to see in my mailbox. I have not ordered anything yet from them, their pricing leaves a lot to be desired. It is the same way I felt looking at the new Service Merchandise site last week. Nothing worth buying for the price they are charging. It is difficult for these ghost retailers to come back from the dead without physical stores. Mervyn's was another one that was supposed to come back with a website, but it has not happened. I wonder if Sears will be another one by the end of 2021.
DeleteI posted my visit to the Pasadena Macroplaza Mall from last week as well on the Youtube channel. It was very dead for a Saturday night two weeks before Christmas. Sears was the only place busy, but I am sure it is because of the store closing sale. I almost went to Fry's that night as well, but I was running close to 7pm when I made it to the Baybrook area.
Grocery store baggers will still take groceries out by request at HEB and Kroger from what I understand. It is not standard like it used to be though. Those grocery carryouts were a good opportunity for the sackers to make tips. I worked for a very brief period at Kroger as a bagger, but it was very boring so I didn't stay long. Randall's is more customer service friendly, but they sometimes didn't have a dedicated sacker. I saw the customer service managers bagging during rushes, especially when only one cashier was on duty. Those Randall's uniforms were way too much in that commercial, imagine wearing that and running out groceries in a Summer rain like that guy in the commercial. I haven't bought meat or anything else from a grocery store counter in years, I wouldn't be surprised if the staff is less customer friendly than in years past.
I have gone to a few malls and stores in the past month in the area. Besides the loss of Sears, the crowds are pretty heavy like in 2019. The biggest change is that small stores are keeping lines outside their stores which pack more people into the mall corridors. Department stores are not limiting the amount of people inside right now.
The Sears t-shirts were a limited time offer, I hope the Radio Shack t-shirts will come back. I missed out on them, but I would like to add one to my collection.
I have a feeling Sears is going to be the next Blockbuster, having only one location left. I can imagine that even with one location left, that store would still have inventory issues lol.
DeleteI wonder what retail store is going to struggle like Sears or Montgomery Wards in 20 years from now, around 2040. Maybe JCPenney or Macy’s, but hopefully not, though realistically speaking, it probably will happen.
I wonder if people thought that Sears would never struggle like this back in the glory days of Sears, like what people think of Walmart or Amazon now.
Did any retailers struggle really bad in 1980, because if they did, it would mean that every 20 years, from 1980, 2000, and 2020 all had a struggling retailer. 2000 had Wards, and 2020 has Sears. And I already talked about a potential struggling retailer in 2040 above, earlier in this comment.
I decided to take a look at the Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog online since I had not seen it in a while. It's a pretty lengthy catalog. I was surprised to see that they were selling Kenmore cookware! It does not appear to be in stock now though. They do have this pretty retro 1980s looking cassette boombox, but I'm sure the quality is more Tozai than what a real 1980s boombox would be, lol. The prices, as you note, are ridiculous. These catalogs clearly target older shoppers who don't know how to shop online.
DeleteSpeaking of Service Merchandise, I found an article from a newspaper in Tennessee earlier this week where the author writes about missing RadioShack, Service Merchandise, and Sears. The article is unfortunately behind a paywall though so I couldn't read it. Still, that's a nice list of stores! The remaining RadioShack franchise stores are probably more useful than the few remaining Sears though. I'll have some thoughts about RadioShack in a reply I'll make on your latest post.
There is some good RadioShack online news though. The retro RS t-shirts are back in stock! I suppose the new owners of RadioShack heard our complaints, lol.
I had no idea there was an attempt at making a Mervyn's online store. I think that'll be even less successful than the new Service Merchandise.
I watched your Macroplaza Mall video. Wow, it's pretty sad in there. The dummies on the benches adds to the spookiness of a dying mall, lol. I'm not sure how that place will survive without Sears. OTOH, if someone wants to shop for athletic shoes without having to wait in line at a more successful mall, I suppose Macroplaza is the place to be.
I do remember those Randall's uniforms. I think the employees were wearing something like that even up until the time Safeway took over. It surely wasn't comfortable, but that was pretty common for grocery clerks and baggers at the time. Some of the Randall's I've been to in modern times do seem to be understaffed at times, but the Town & Country one I went to earlier this year had just about every checkout open with a ringer and a bagger. It seems that they put more effort into those busy, wealthy area stores than some of the stores more on the periphery.
I rarely use the supermarket service departments, but I'm sure the employees there have less power to do things than they did in the past. I'm sure that's where supermarkets like Rice Epicurean can get an advantage.
This might be the first Christmas season ever where I did not visit a single mall or even a mall anchor. I'm not even sure if I would have gone to a mall even without the pandemic. There's just not much to draw me into a mall these days. I suppose Deerbrook Mall has B&N, which might have drawn me in, but that's about it. It was quite difficult to shop for gifts this year because I really didn't know what to buy and the stores I liked to go to to browse for things are just about all gone now. I was able to find some things to give, but it certainly wasn't like it was in the past.
Speaking of B&N, I really don't know why they and FYE reduced their online catalog of music. I ordered some CDs from a small music shop in Vermont recently and it turns out that they use the same distributor in Kentucky, Alliance Entertainment, that B&N and FYE used to use. Thus, the distributor still has the inventory, but B&N and FYE don't have access to it anymore. It's very strange, but I'm just glad I was able to get the music I wanted at a fair price even if I had to order it from a small shop.
Yeah some Sears and Kmart store will continue to exist in the future. My money is on the Guam location for Kmart, and as for Sears I really don't know.
DeleteTarget or Kohl's may be the retailer struggling in 2040. The department store chains may no longer exist by 2030 at the rate they are burning through cash.
The 1980's had a lot of failed local retailers. The early 1980's was mostly a recessionary period and a lot of small regional chains fell in those years. Nothing that I know of on the scale of Sears or Montgomery Ward.
I am sure management knew probably as far back as the mid 1990's that Sears would not make it long term. A lot of their money making businesses began to be sold off back then.
If Sears is around as a retail operation 20 years from now, it'll be under different ownership than now and it'll probably be franchised like RadioShack and the Sears Hometown stores. I'm sure a catalog/online retail operation will have interest running an operation like the current Montgomery Ward online/catalog store with the Sears name.
DeleteUnlike RadioShack, who still had an intact retail operation even after two bankruptcies, Sears hardly has any kind of retail operation still left. When General Wireless sold RadioShack recently, they actually had something to sell aside from a name, but that won't be the case with Sears. That said, Sears still has their home services division which will be valuable to someone.
E.J. Korvette, aka Korvettes, went out of business in December 1980. Korvettes was a small regional discount department store in the Northeast US so they hardly had the history and footprint that Sears and Montgomery Ward had, but they still had their role in being one of the first discount and membership chains. 1980, 2000, and 2020 are all years where the economy was not in good shape. Come to think of it, the economy wasn't so hot in 1990 or 2010 either. If this keeps up, we can probably predict pain in 2030 and 2040, lol.
I would be quite surprised if Macy's and JCPenney even make it to 2040 in their current form at the very least. Kohl's is an interesting guess.
I wouldn't be surprised if one of Walgreens or CVS fails at some point in the moderately distant future. Rite Aid seems to be barely hanging on, but that's been the case for a while now. Amazon is getting involved with filling prescriptions now and there have been mail order pharmacies for decades now. Given the poor reputations of CVS and Walgreens at filling prescriptions and having fair pricing, if a mail order place can get prescriptions to people in 2-3 hours, I really don't see how these pharmacy chains can survive.
That cassette boombox looks better made than one I saw at Urban Outfitters a couple of weeks ago. Speaking of Urban Outfitters, they still sell some albums and tapes. Their selection has fallen off big time especially on the cassettes. I haven't looked through the latest catalog Montgomery Ward sent me yet. I rarely look at mail these days.
DeleteIt is funny that an article from the Times Free Press is behind a paywall, lol. All of those retailers would be a sight to see in 2020. I wasn't even able to read 5 seconds before the message blocked everything from me.
I will visit Macroplaza Mall hopefully a few times in the next month before Sears closes. I just don't see how the mall will survive, it is beyond dead in there.
Speaking of grocery stores, one of the biggest changes in shopping habits is making things difficult for the rest of us who shop normally. HEB especially has way too many of the online order carts and employees in the way. I think they need to figure out a better way to separate these orders from the main areas of the store or at least make the carts smaller. Between the stockers and online order carts, these store aisles get very crowded during peak shopping hours. I know the managers want to squeeze every dollar out of their store, but the online orders should not get in the way of the in-store shoppers.
The only gifts I purchased from the mall this year besides some video games were gift cards. With my limited schedule and not seeing my extended family most of this year, I had no idea what to give. The gift cards can be used in-store or online so the recipients may not visit the mall either.
You would think that online sales of music would be an area that B&N and FYE would keep going. It is not good for those companies to lose out on a major distributor.
I wonder if the Sears and Kmart names will get picked up by one of those companies that buys vintage retail names for future use. There was a company that bought Foley's and several other retail names, but has not made any significant moves to bring the brands back. Thankfully JCPenney was saved from the retail graveyard, but Sears and Kmart are on borrowed time.
DeleteI don't know much about Korvettes, they did have a pretty catchy name. I am guessing that Kmart, Walmart, Target, Ames, and several others helped their demise. You do bring up a good point, it seems like the beginning of each recent decade has been a bad time for the economy. This time around a bunch of retailers were saved, but some had to go.
I think we have seen the peak of the pharmacy retailers. They just don't have a good business model besides the location aspect. They build on prime land, but charge very high prices for their store merchandise. Prescriptions can be found for cheaper at many other places or by mail. The stores are way too close to each other as well and cut into the profitability of each store. We have seen some of these retailers close or downsize the stores, but more is coming.
The RadioShack shirts are not just back, but it looks like they have added some more choices since I posted my last reply. They now have a "The Shack Is Back" shirt with their slogan from around 2009 on it. I'm not sure if 2009 counts as retro, lol, but I suppose it probably does given all that has happened to RadioShack since then. They also have a shirt with the "America's Technology Store" logo on it that they were using in the early 1990s. That's a nice one.
DeleteA couple of the shirts are on the 'trending sellers' list on the front page of the RadioShack site. I'm not surprised to see that those are hot sellers. I'd absolutely add those to your collection if you can.
I'll go ahead and combine my reply from the miscellaneous topics post about RadioShack. It's possible that some franchise stores still have a 1980s look to them. I recently came across a RadioShack dealer which still has a retro 1970s Radio Shack sign out front. On the back side of the store, there is a retro logo as well and a sign saying that the RadioShack also sells appliances and lawn mowers. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if it still looks like the 1980s inside that store, lol. I also noticed that there is a knock-off Eckerd pharmacy chain in Florida that has started up in Florida, lol.
On the topic of Eckerd, you should check out PlazaACME's latest blog post. He has some photos from inside a Rite Aid in his area which still had a 1980s Eckerd interior with neon and all a couple of years ago. The store has now closed.
On the topic of pharmacies, we've talked about downsized Walgreens before. One of the Walgreens near me which downsized recently had a Village Medical primary care physician's office open up in the sub-divided part of the store. I did some reading and it seems that Walgreens has invested about a billion dollars into Village Medical for a 30% ownership stake and that Houston is the pilot market for that concept. They plan on a serious rollout to many markets in the next 5 years. Expect to see a lot of Walgreens stores to get downsized in the next few years. I suppose Walgreens knows they can't compete just on prescriptions and C-store stuff alone so they're shifting their business model away from retail and into medical care. We'll see how that works.
Last I saw, Urban Outfitters was selling clear Walkman-like players. Those clear players were made to give to prisoners so the guards could make sure nothing was hidden in them. It's funny that UO was/is selling those!
I totally agree with you about HEB. I had the same experience during my only visit to an HEB since the start of the pandemic. The online carts were everywhere and the employees were ignoring social distancing just so they could quickly grab stuff for those carts. It's bad enough that their stores look like warehouses, but now it really feels like one. I've heard that some grocers are opening stores dedicated to just filling online orders (I think HEB may have one of these in Houston where they turned a closed Pantry store into a fulfillment center). I've read that grocers aren't making as much money on online orders since there are fewer impulse buys on online receipts. Thus, it's important for supermarkets to make their stores welcoming to in-person shoppers. HEB's online carts aren't helping in that regard.
It wouldn't surprise me if the Wards catalog/online store generates more sales now than all of Sears' retail operations here in 2021. But, yeah, I do think the Sears/Kmart names will get snapped up, but that doesn't mean they will be as successful as the Wards catalog.
The variety of Radio Shack stuff on the website has gotten a lot better. I hope the new owners have success bringing the chain back into the mainstream.
DeleteThe links to the old Radio Shack sign and Eckerd's neon are pretty awesome. I definitely remember Eckerd's neon signage from that era. Those new Eckerd pharmacies are plain and boring, I wonder if they are affiliated with the old chain in some way.
I have been reading about a store level management position being eliminated in the Walgreens stores that is supposed to happen sometime this year. It would make sense if Walgreens pans to shrink a sizeable amount of store space, but I really feel bad for those affected.
Speaking of retailers catering to online shoppers, Walmart and Target have been adding pickup spaces in their parking lots. The part that really bothers me is that prime parking spaces are getting used for these lanes which rarely ever have cars parked for pickup. The majority of the grocers have lanes on the side of the store that don't interfere with the parking lots.
It would be cool if the Sears catalog makes a comeback like the Wards catalog has with the new ownership. We at least have the 2017 Wishbook.
I would not be surprised at all if Walgreens is shedding store level management positions given the expected downsizing of many of their stores. It seems that Walgreens might be preparing to throw in the towel on selling anything not related to prescriptions, over the counter medications/health stuff, and cosmetics. Even then, cosmetics might not be in all stores.
DeleteRetail Retell recently shared with me a photo on Flickr that someone else took in the Cleveland, OH area where a Walgreens moved into an old Dairy Queen location that is very small. Perhaps we'll see Walgreens downsize their stores by moving into old fast food locations that have drive-thru windows. I suppose we may see some Walgreens which look like old Wendy's and Carl's Jr's here soon, lol.
I don't think that new Eckerd's is related to the old Eckerd chain, but old Eckerd was based in Florida as well so who knows. It'll be interested to see if that chain grows. It's very plain, but I suppose it's not much different than some of these downsized Walgreens.
I have noticed that many retailers have reserved some of the most prime parking spots for online pickup. These spots are almost always empty when I visit the stores so I'm not sure how popular they are, but Target and Walmart have certainly invested a lot into them. Even before the pandemic, my visits to Target and Walmart have started to become more limited in recent years. With grocers like HEB starting to sell general merchandise at prices which usually beat Target and sometimes even Walmart, it's easy to do one-stop shopping at the supermarkets. Even Kroger and Randall's can be competitive at times on general merchandise if you use their digital coupons. They probably aren't as cheap as Walmart, but beating Target is not too hard to do.
Speaking of Target and Randall's, did you see the Houston Historic Retail blog post about the new downsized Target on S. Shephard that is in an old Randall's location? Very surprisingly, Target did very little to change the exterior of the Randall's. It still very much looks like a Randall's on the outside, but it certainly looks like a smaller Target on the inside.
Speaking of Sears, I saw some of Jeff's latest videos on YouTube and it seems that the Mesquite Sears is heading downhill pretty quickly based on a visit he made there a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure you saw that video. I can't say I'm surprised. In some ways, the store looked better in the video than I was expecting, but the hardlines departments are looking pitiful.
Speaking of catalogs, that relatively new website with a bunch of old Wards, JCP, and Sears catalog scans has added a lot of new catalogs to their database. It's really an awesome website and it's a lot better than some of the other websites which have collections of scanned catalogs. They don't have the 2017 Wishbook yet, but I'm sure that's coming soon.
The Radio Shack Catalogs website has been redesigned as well. I'm not sure if they've added any new content, but at least some of the content they had is now easier to find.
Walgreens has downsized their inventory pretty heavily over the past decade or so. I think there is a good chance you are right, stores will be downsized.
DeleteThat mini Walgreens store conversion looks very strange. I couldn't tell, but was the location drive-thru only?
With the grocers opening 100,000 square foot stores lately, more departments have been getting expanded. I also have been picking up extra items that I would have gone to Walmart or Target for in the past.
I had been to that Randall's prior to the store closing. I am going to have to check it out now that the store is a Target.
That Sears store looks much more empty that it did when I went back in October in Jeff's video. It reminds me of how drastically the Pasadena location emptied out after Christmas last year.
Thanks for sending over the link. I will check out some of those catalogs when I have a chance.
I visited that Radio Shack in Cleveland finally. It is packed into a relatively small space, but they have a really good variety of inventory. As a bonus, their sidewalk sign has the older logo along with the modern logo. It is well worth a trip if you are in the area.
It would be ironic if after Sears finally goes out of business for good, they get revived by someone and starts using the Sears name for a catalog-only business, like they did when the company was founded back in the 1890’s.
DeleteThe circle of life, lol. That would be the best case scenario for the Sears name at this point.
DeleteWhat did the Joe V’s Smart Shop building on 290 and W 43rd Street used to be before?
ReplyDeleteI am not sure, maybe one of our blog readers can help out with this. I have not passed by that area in a long time.
DeleteThe bulk of it was originally a Service Merchandise, but it's possible that the Joe V's took some sub-divided space from the former Venture/Kmart. The Burlington that had been taking up most of the former Venture/Kmart has recently moved to the new powercenter being built on 290 near the Loop. The former Toys R Us at that shopping center is now filled by Rainbow I do believe.
DeleteIt opened as a Venture in the early 90s. When Venture left Houston, Kmart (which had been in the Northbrook shopping center at 290/34th since ca. 1970) moved over in 1997. It closed in the early 2000s. Incidentally, Randalls (which had been at 290/34th since the 1970s) moved to the old Kmart and Academy moved from 290/Bingle (opened as a Handy Dan ca. 1980) to the old Randalls. Only Academy still stands. Musical chairs on 290, retail style!
DeleteThank you for the clarification anonymous.
DeleteThanks crooow for even more information on the Joe V's site. I have yet to shop at a Joe V's since there are none in my area. Are they worth making a special trip to check out?
DeleteYes, there has been quite a bit of retail movement in that area over the years. That movement continues with the construction of the new powercenter on 290 near the Loop.
DeleteThat shopping center did open with a Venture that turned into a Kmart. Like with the Willowbrook Venture, the Venture on 290 was joined by a Service Merchandise. The Service Merchandise pad is actually where the bulk of the Joe V's is located now, but I suspect that some of the Joe V's is in a sub-divided part of the old Venture/Kmart. The bulk of the old Venture/Kmart has been a Burlington for the last few years, but the Burlington has recently moved to the new powercenter. I think there is also an Affordable Furniture in the old Venture/Kmart space.
Randall's is no longer in the old Kmart space on 34th, but El Rancho is there now and Albertsons has an investment in El Rancho. Of course, Randall's/Safeway is under the Albertsons umbrella as well. I have not visited that particular El Rancho yet, but I was lucky enough to visit that Randall's a month or two before it was announced that it was closing.
Joe V's is a very basic looking store. It's probably not worth a visit unless you're looking for good prices on groceries because they do have good prices as you'd expect from a discount grocer from HEB. It might be interesting to cover a Joe V's just so some of the grocery enthusiasts from outside Texas can get a look at one, but perhaps a location built from scratch by Joe V's, like the one on Veterans Memorial, might be more indicative of the Joe V's look (which isn't all that impressive, IMO).
El Rancho might be a good addition to the blog. I've been to the first El Rancho in Houston, near Greenspoint, and that is an interesting store. It's perhaps not quite vintage Fiesta level interesting, but it's pretty interesting for a modern grocery store.
I didn't even notice a new power center under construction by the Loop and 290. I drove down 290 a few weeks ago after my last visit to the North Shepherd Sears.
DeleteI remember the Service Merchandise and Toys R Us at the 290 and 43rd shopping center, but that was the last time I actually went there.
El Rancho and Joe V's would be interesting to visit. I noticed a Joe V's on 1960 near Aldine Westfield a few months ago.
The new 290 powercenter by the Loop is not very visible from 290. The westbound I-10 to 290 connector ramp more or less blocks any view those on 290 have of the powercenter. The powercenter is quite visible from both the west and eastbound connector ramps to I-10 since those are higher than 290 itself is.
DeleteIt seems to me that it's rather questionable why they would build a powercenter on a freeway when it's not even all that visible from the said freeway. You'd think they would have learned from Northwest Mall not being very visible from 290, but I suppose that history lesson was ignored. Anyway, even with that major problem, it looks like that powercenter is not having a problem filling up. I know there will be a Burlington, Ross, and Five Below in that shopping center at the very least. That's not exactly the highest end roster of retailers, but at least those types of stores seem to be doing okay in recent times.
It seems like a waste to me that this new center is being built. Northwest Mall is sitting there and would have been a perfect place for these retailers to move to. Sadly, once they pulled the plug on the interior of the mall, it made redevelopment with a focus on retail highly unlikely for the old mall.
DeleteSorry if I’m wrong about this because I am looking at Google Maps and it might be incorrect, but why are there 2 Office Depot locations in the Humble/Deerbrook area?
ReplyDeleteYes you are correct. The location further North was an Office Max, and it opened with that shopping center in the mid 1990's. It was changed to an Office Depot after the store flooded and was remodeled after Hurricane Harvey. The store at FM 1960 further South is located in half of a former Randall's. I wonder how both stores continue to survive.
DeleteAmazing store! Stock issues aside, I hope this store continues to wow people for years to come. It looks like a very cool destination.
ReplyDeleteIf you are ever in the area, it is a must see. It is amazing that this store still looks this good after 15 years in business. It goes to show how well they built and designed this store.
DeleteDoes anyone know what the HCC building on Beltway 8 and I-10 or the Hobby Lobby neighboring it used to be?
ReplyDeleteThere has been so much movement in that area over the years. Besides the former Sears Grand, I have not spent time in that shopping area. Readers, if you can help please comment below.
DeleteThere was a Sears Grand in Houston? I did not know that.
DeleteSorry, I misspoke. The Great Indoors was what I was actually talking about, lol. Our closest Sears Grand was in the Austin area.
DeleteYeah, I was doubtful that they would build a Sears Grand so close to the Memorial City Mall Sears.
DeleteThe HCC is in a former Builders Square hardware store. Builders Square was, of course, owned by Kmart.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what, if anything, was where Hobby Lobby is now.
Thank you anonymous for the info.
DeleteThe HCC use to be part builders square and part BABYS R US
ReplyDeletebehind the school there is a former AMC movie theater( now the school theater) attached to a former McDonald’s that is now a bookstore
Thanks for helping to answer the above question. These structures change so much over the years.
DeleteHere's a NASA Fry's update. I noticed that Fry's advertised some blank optical media and optical media accessories that I was interested in for very good prices. This is actually not that unusual. Fry's always has a bunch of blank optical media for sale in their ad each week and probably every model of blank media they sell is put on sale at least one week each month in rotation. Although the blank CDs I was interested in are frequently advertised, it always seemed to be listed as being out of stock on the Fry's website and in my own observation when I visited Fry's back in September or October.
ReplyDeleteWell, the blank CDs I was interested in was actually listed as being in stock at all three Houston locations when I checked this week. The prices were good so I decided I needed to check this out and I ended up at the NASA location.
Rather surprisingly, the Fry's website was correct, the discs and accessories I was interested in were actually in stock and they actually had a decent number of all the stuff I was interested in! I guess this does mean that Fry's is still getting some new inventory in some of their prime departments aside from the pandemic supplies and such. Unlike some previous recent visits to Fry's, I did actually end up buying some stuff this time obviously. I probably have a few years worth of blank CDs and paper CD envelopes now, lol, but the prices were really quite good so I couldn't resist stocking up.
Aside from that, I can confirm that the right side of the store is now closed to the public. A makeshift half wall has been put up that blocks off the old appliances and home theater side of the store. The cafe is still accessible and I guess it's still open at least sometimes, but I don't think it was open during my visit. Just like the old Hello Josephine eatery at the Mall of the Mainland food court, it's sometimes hard to tell if something is open or not when they don't have any customers, lol.
Obviously, what products they did have on the closed half of the store have been shifted over to the PC/software/electronics parts half of the store. What few appliances they have are now where the computer furniture was and what few TVs they have left on display are where the PC displays are. Really, just about everything on the PC side of the store has been moved around. Unfortunately, the aisle markers are now not accurate (they still show products where they used to be instead of where they are now) so it still takes some hunting to find what you want. The blank media moved, but at least it wasn't too hard to find.
Also, it seems that Fry's is not updating their shelf price tags to reflect sale prices and such. The blank CDs I bought were on sale, but that was not marked on the shelves. What sale price tags were on the shelves had sale prices that were marked as having ended in October 2020. So, yeah, if you want to know what prices things are, you'll probably have to check the Fry's website on your phone while you shop.
Anyway, with the consolidation, the aisles and shelves are not as barren as they once were. There are still some empty parts of the store, but most open areas of the store actually look like they have credible amounts of inventory.
I did not see any signs indicating that the store was still closing early, but I'm not sure. The store didn't have a lot of customers, but I wasn't really there at a time when I'd expect the store to be busy. There were about five other parties in the store shopping which still made the store feel pretty empty even with it being half the size it was.
So, yeah, Fry's still has some big problems, but at least I got what I wanted at a very good price.
Thanks so much for the update. I am really glad that I documented the store when I did. In addition to the video I posted, there are over 100 photos from my visit that day. Some really awesome fixtures will now be covered up, more than likely permanently.
DeleteI did notice the same issue with the price tags on my last visit. I guess the employees are still way behind on getting the store caught up after the consolidation. The Fry's Facebook page was last updated in late December and the comment section is gold. Photos of stores being restocked are featured and the comment section is full of jokes.
One retailer I am interested in visiting is that massive furniture store near Fry's. It looks like what I pictured the Nebraska Furniture to be like. I wonder if that store has more electronics for sale than the nearby Fry's does.
It has taken me a while to come back to the blog since my last post. I have been pretty busy with some projects lately. I have been more actively documenting the Pasadena Sears since we are in the final stretch now. The store closes this upcoming Sunday the 24th. The mall is doing very poorly now with only 1 food court vendor left, Journey's closing, and little to no foot traffic. Only 2 entrances to the mall will be open when Sears closes and most of the remaining stores are near Sears. The entrance next to Dillard's which opens up to a nearly dead wing, and the food court which has only 1 restaurant left and a view of the empty Palais Royal. Neither entrance is inviting if you are a casual shopper that just wants to check out the mall. Finish Line and Champs are the last 2 national retailers left at the mall.
The Fiesta on 59 was recently visited as well. Most of the neon signage is still intact surprisingly. Some of the neon was removed for newer signage, but the best signs are still there. I am really glad they kept some of the old neon and it really looks good with the newer signage.
That is a good point, you were probably one of the last few shoppers to step foot into that half of the NASA Fry's which is now closed to the public. I'm glad you were able to get video and photo coverage of the place. I did watch the video. It was pretty dead in the store when you took that, but it wasn't much better during my visit unfortunately.
DeleteI must say that pulling into that store at night from the back of the store makes it feel like you're driving into a zombieland. The situation doesn't get much better even when you get right to the front of the store since there are very few cars of shoppers and employees there.
I can certainly see how photos of Fry's 'restocking' would be the subject of many jokes, lol. I think most people have given up on the store. I can certainly understand why shoppers have gone elsewhere though given the poor state of the inventory. At least I got what I was looking for, but it took a few months for it to get back in stock.
AFAIK, that big, new furniture store near the NASA Fry's does not sell electronics. At least their website does not say anything about it. The Nebraska Furniture Mart in the Dallas area is a different story though, they look like a very interesting place to visit if you get a chance. They might be one of the most exciting retail stores around in modern times. That store looks to have a real 'wow' factor mostly due to the size of it, but they also sell some high-end electronics which really aren't found at big box type stores these days except for maybe some stereo stuff which is sold at Best Buy Magnolia departments.
Speaking of furniture stores, I recently had a look at the inside of the old Greenspoint Finger's Furniture store on Google that is now a flea market. The basic layout of the flea market is more or less the same as how the Finger's looked, but of course the nice carpets and fixtures have all been pulled out. I don't know if that would be anything interesting to document for the blog since I'm not sure how much interest there would be in an old Finger's (though that was a neat store when it was a Finger's as you might recall), but I suppose it might be something if you run out of other ideas.
I'm glad to see that the 59 Fiesta is still hanging in there with the neon. Fiesta has been very slowly renovating some of their stores. I didn't realize that some stores have a partial remodel that has kept the neon. That's going to be neat to see. There's a lot of interest in supermarkets by other retail bloggers these days so I'm sure there will be some buzz online about that when it gets posted.
It'll be great to have good documentation of the last Houston area Sears and also the newest full-line Sears we had in the area. I'm really surprised this liquidation has lasted this long. Surely they didn't have a ton of inventory to sell off unless they were bringing in stuff from other retailers. I suppose the fixtures sale needed some time though. I'm not at all surprised to hear that the mall is doing poorly. Sears was the major draw at that mall, but even that was far too little to make it a viable mall. With Sears almost gone now, there's practically nothing to draw traffic to the mall. That probably has to be the most endangered mall in the Houston area right now. The situation at West Oaks looked pretty bad based off Jeff's recent video and I can't imagine Greenspoint is a happening place these days, but I think the situation in Pasadena is very dire now.
I was a little worried about an employee stopping me from taking the video at Fry's, but nobody seemed to be watching. I am glad that I went there when I did. It is located on a very dark lot with the parking lot lamps mostly burned out.
DeleteI am going to have to check out that store, it certainly drew my attention. It looked like there were some electronics through the front, but we did pass by pretty fast on the service road.
Maybe we saw some LED screens for advertisements.
I have been in the Flea Market a handful of times. A staircase with mirrors is about all that is left of the old Fingers that is recognizable. The interior is unrecognizable but it has the feel of a mall because the store is huge.
I wonder how many other Fiesta stores have the remodel that also kept some neon lights. I remember the newer locations having a lot of different colors, but no neon.
The Pasadena Sears had a lot of fixtures. They inherited a lot of stuff from the old Sears that was about a mile down Southmore. I went all out on this final sale and I was able to save a lot of signage that would have been thrown away. Thankfully the liquidators let me buy everything I brought to them. The North Shepherd liquidators would not sell signage, but some employees let me have some on the day they were throwing a bunch of signs away.
West Oaks and Greesnpoint both need another visit, they are almost as bad off as Macroplaza. With the Sears closing, I hadn't had time to go anywhere else for the blog. I made up for the lack of earlier coverage by making 4 visits in the final 2 weeks of business there. I also went on the final 2 days and the day after the closing. I was there to film the final mall gate closing and minutes later, the final announcement.
The parking lot at the NASA Fry's is quite dark. The two sides of the store, which you either have to enter or exit from, are almost completely empty and there's something eerie about having to go through those to get to the store. Of course, when I was there, the parking lot in front of the store was pretty sparse as well. Spirit Halloween would be wise to consider getting into that empty half of Fry's next year, lol.
DeleteOddly enough, some of the Fiestas with the best neon seem to not be getting renovations at the current time. Of course, I don't think they need renovations, but we'll see. Some of the Fiestas getting renovations seem to be ones that need them in some ways. Of course, the state of Fiestas are quite variable. I was recently looking at the Sunnyside Fiesta and it has almost no decor at all. It just looks like a plain white box in a 1960s supermarket (perhaps a former Weingarten's just based on looks, but I'm not sure about that).
That's awesome that some stuff from the old Pasadena Sears was being used at the newer Sears. It sounds like you got a ton of good stuff. That's awesome. I've heard stories of other people trying to buy things from closing Sears/Kmarts and being treated very rudely. I know Retail Retell has some stories about that and accusations being leveled by the liquidator that he was just trying to flip things on Ebay. Of course, at this point, Sears might not really care about protecting their intellectual property.
I'm glad you were able to capture the last seconds of the last Houston Sears full-line store. That'll be a great piece of history. I look forward to seeing all this stuff on the blog.
I'll go ahead and combine my reply from the other conversation earlier in this post with this reply. The softlines at the Mesquite Sears didn't look too bad in Jeff's video, but the hardlines looked pathetic and I can't imagine it being much different than how the Pasadena location looked a few months back. It's clear that Sears isn't even trying with these locations. They really have nothing for shoppers even in the departments Sears is most famous for. It's a real shame.
It seems that the Walgreens in the old Cleveland, OH DQ does have some products inside for shoppers to browse. They're probably mainly over-the-counter medications and maybe a small selection of beauty goods. It looks quite similar to the very downsized FM 1960 W & N. Eldridge Walgreens in terms of selection.
That Cleveland Radio Shack looked really neat in the photo you shared of it. It's good to hear that they have good inventory. They're probably more useful than Fry's these days, lol. I don't get out to Northeast Houston all that often these days, much less Liberty County, but that looks like something neat to check out.
If you're ever in Cleveland again, you might want to check out the Brookshire Brothers up there across from the Sears Hometown store. It's got an interesting mix of 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s decor including some neon. It's an odd mix of old and somewhat new decor. The HEB up there in the old Safeway is really strange by HEB standards at least. There's some really odd retail in Cleveland for a small place.
Speaking of Spirit Halloween, the Pasadena Macroplaza Mall was so dead, even they didn't locate there. The empty Palais Royal would have been perfect for them. Spirit Halloween would certainly have the perfect sounds to scare people walking through the empty aisles of Fry's.
DeleteI was pleasantly surprised at how nice everyone was at the Pasadena Sears up until the end. Employees didn't look to stressed out and kept the lines moving pretty well. The management team did a great job keeping the morale up despite the uncertainty for the employees. I feel really bad for the employees in each one of these situations. I am sure some employees had been with Sears for many years. I just can't figure out how Eddie can continue to run the company into the ground.
It looks like the Mesquite Sears is on it's way out now as well. Sears Layoffs has the store on this weeks closing list. The Loopnet listing for the store has the building listed as a former Sears location. And the careers page now has a store closing backroom job listed. Looks like El Paso will be the lone Texas full size Sears left. I need to prioritize a trip to visit the Baton Rouge Sears before that one disappears as well. That Sears will be the only one between Atlanta and El Paso or Florida and El Paso.
It is strange that a small town has more vintage retailers than the large city it is a distant suburb of. Sears and Radio Shack live on and still do decent business from what I can tell. The HEB is still in the old Pantry style building. Even the Walmart Supercenter is one of the older style Supercenters and has more of a square layout than the rectangular layouts of the majority of the stores. The electronics department is also close to the middle of the store which is a throwback to the vintage layout of the 1980's and 90's stores.
Have you ever visited the El Paso Sears or the Mesquite Sears?
DeleteCould you tell what fixtures that were in the Macroplaza Sears that were from the old Pasadena Sears west on Southmore?
DeleteSpirit Halloween would have been a great fit at Macroplaza Mall given the zombieland feel of the place. I'm a bit surprised that they didn't put a store there this year, but I suppose Spirit probably figured that they wouldn't get enough customers there. I can't say that I blame them. It's a bit surprising that Spirit/Halloween City didn't put up a location at the Mall of the Mainland either. Perhaps these businesses were a bit more conservative with opening locations this year due to there probably being less demand than usual.
DeleteYes, things have to be tough for the Sears employees who lost their jobs. Then again, I sure hope none of them were blindsided by this. Things have to be tough for long-time employees of Sears though. They put in many years of work only to see Lampert run the chain as if he didn't care about the retail side of things. Those employees will find it very difficult to find retail work that was similar to Sears of the 1990s or anything like that. Those days are long-gone, unfortunately.
I have not been keeping up with the Sears Layoffs page. Someone became obsessed with claiming that loss prevention was running the company and making all kinds of silly claims. I'm still not sure what it is about Sears/Kmart that attracts all kinds of online trolls. But, yeah, I can't say I'm surprised that the Mesquite location is closing based on Jeff's video. That location has a chance of being redeveloped into something useful though so at least there is that. I really can't see the rest of the Kmarts and Sears lasting much longer. It seems that the chain is being liquidated about 7 stores at a time. The inventory at these stores is so bad that the only thing worth seeing at these stores these days is seeing if any interesting fixtures get put up for sale like very old signage. Some people like the Albertsons Florida Blogger have found interesting items in the desk drawers at Kmart/Sales liquidations. I think he found a Randall's Remarkable card in a drawer at a closing Florida Kmart, lol.
I'm not sure if the liquidation managers are local employees or someone brought in by the liquidators, but it seems those are the people who people like Retail Retell have had difficult times with. It's great that you had a good experience buying things. I look forward to seeing what all you were able to pick up.
I mentioned the Sunnyside Fiesta the other day. That store is in the news today. Someone, they say they were probably drunk, drove into the store and injured several people. You may remember that a similar situation happened at the Gulfgate HEB a few years ago.
I didn't realize that the Cleveland Walmart was something special as well. I looked it up on Google Maps and I see what you're saying about the electronics department. The HEB is probably in an old HEB Pantry Foods location in an old Safeway. It's pretty unique for the 2020s at least. There is also the Western Auto store in Cleveland.
I'm not sure why Cleveland has so many retro stores. Hopefully that doesn't change. It's like an interesting time warp which isn't too far from Houston. I'd really like to see that Radio Shack and the Brookshire Brothers. Those look really, really neat.
Not sure how the BR Sears continues to survive, but it looked pretty well stocked when I visited a few months back, so maybe it still does good business. Certainly good news for the Mall of La which is a rare mall these days that has all its anchor stores occupied.
DeleteThe Mesquite Sears, OTOH, had the smell of death when I visited in October (low inventory, empty space blocked off, etc).
Yes I have visited both of the above Sears locations. I have a store tour of both locations along with the attached malls saved for future blog posts.
DeleteMany of the old racks from the Southmore Sears location were moved to the mall. I also scored an old handbasket with the rarely used strange 1983 Sears logo.
DeleteIt is telling that Spirit would not open up in a mall.
DeleteI read that after the latest rounds of closing there will be 34 Sears and 30 Kmart stores. The layoffs page has only 24 Kmarts left and the Sears list is still being debated. I think a lot of employees thought Sears was going to stick around, the management team probably keeps them going just long enough to keep the stores going. Usually store managers know well in advance when their stores are closing, and cannot tell their employees until authorized. The Sears layoffs page has calmed down and the loss prevention posts are either getting deleted or have stopped.
The main liquidators from what I have heard are from out of town. Supposedly they are not allowed to sell anything with a company logo, but many of the fixtures have logos and signage. A lot of the signage at the Pasadena Sears was ripped down and thrown away in the first days of the liquidation. Once fixtures started getting pulled out of the back, more signage showed up.
The Sunnyside incident was a strange coincidence happening right after we talked about the store.
I forgot about the Western Auto store in Cleveland. That is just one more thing to make that town a worthy stop for retail enthusiasts.
I may visit the BR Sears store soon. With all of the traveling I have done, I have yet to document the Mall of Louisiana. With constant rounds of Sears closings back to back, this is a store that may be endangered. I hope the remaining Sears and Kmart locations continue to survive, but it seems highly unlikely with close to 50 combined locations left in the US company. I may have a chance to visit the Mesquite Sears, but I will try to go close to the end of the sale to see what the store looks like empty.
DeleteIt is crazy to see Sears thriving in Mexico and Kmart thriving in Australia when they are withering down here in the USA.
I had never even heard of that Sunnyside Fiesta before a couple of weeks ago. Well, now I've seen it a lot since it's been in the news quite a bit after that incident! That's an unfortunate situation. I know that a lot of more recently built stores put up little columns in the walkway to prevent people from being able to drive into the store.
DeleteI'm sure you heard the news that Luby's and Fuddruckers will be closing by August. Those two places were once very popular in Houston so it'll be sad to see them go. I've certainly eaten at Luby's a lot over the years, but I last ate there in 2016.
Sears and Kmart could still be alive and well in the US if it wasn't for incompetent leadership. Stores like Sears are struggling in general, but Lampert was putting a lot of emphasis on their online store. Even that online store turned out to be a big fail even in an era when people are doing a lot of shopping online. Stores like Kmart have a better chance, but Kmart has really been in decline since the late 1980s at the very least and the damage might have been too much to recover from. I'm not sure if Kmart ever really got rid of their bad reputation they earned in the lead up to the first bankruptcy.
I suspect all the remaining Sears and Kmart will close sooner or later. Even if some stores have better inventory than others, all reports are that Sears isn't getting much in terms of new inventory. Without products to sell that people want to buy, there's no way these stores can stay in business.
I've mentioned before that we had a local catalog showroom here in Houston called Houston Jewelry. They also had some locations in Dallas called Sterling Jewelry. The Houston one had a location downtown and also across from the Randall's at Westheimer & Gessner. These stores were very similar to a Best Products or Service Merchandise. They're still around as just jewelry stores, but they closed the catalog showroom with the electronics, sporting goods, toys, and all of that in 1992.
Well, while making a reply on the South Texas Retail blog's latest post about Best Products, I did some research on Houston Jewelry and I found that they have fully scanned copies of all their catalogs from 1953 to 1991 on their website. These are totally awesome and are very similar to Service Merchandise's catalogs. I highly recommend checking these out, there are all kinds of neat things in these catalogs.
Some of them even have video games, but they don't list the specific games they had in the catalog. Still, I'm looking at the 1987-1988 catalog right now and they have Technics Hi-Fi components on one page and photos of a Sega Master System and the NES on the next page! How awesome is that?! I didn't realize it was possible to buy the NES in a kit with the light gun and without it. Everyone I knew who had a NES had the gun so I don't think the model without it was very popular even though it was quite a bit cheaper. The Sega Master System only came with the light gun I think.
The 1980s and 1990s catalogs are full of Walkmans. They had many different makes and models of them. This is totally awesome to see, the Lufkin Kmart Walkman woman would have been thrilled, lol. The 1988-89 catalog even has a Sony Discman on the back cover!
Houston Jewelry was an awesome store just like the other catalog showrooms. Here's a lengthy video from their Westheimer store before the catalog showroom was liquidated. It's great that Houston Jewelry embraces their history. I wish all retailers did this.
Now various sources state that the BR Sears will close in the near future. :(
DeleteI am now thinking about the huge columns in front of Target stores. A lot of stores really need those, as shown by what happened at the Fiesta store. Speaking of Target, I checked out that new Target on Westheimer that is in the old Randall's building. Wow is that store small, pictures just don't do the store justice. Surprisingly, they have a really good mix of products in the store for the small size. Some departments such as furniture are non-existent, but they have an electronics department. I think it is well worth the visit.
DeleteIt is sad to see a legendary restaurant chain disappear. I used to eat at Fuddrucker's all of the time in the 90's, but their prices increased. That is what drove me away back then. Maybe a location or two will be saved somehow.
By now you have probably seen the latest rumors of three more waves of closings that will take out the rest of the Transformco chain. The latest list has the Baton Rouge Sears closing, it is a shame that I did not make it there before the store closing sale.
I don't remember the Houston Jewelry chain. I would love to revisit one of those old school stores like Service Merchandise or BEST. I may have already mentioned this, but we used to visit the Greenspoint BEST back in the 80's and early 90's before they closed.
Those old catalogs are very nostalgic, I think back to those old feelings of excitement when looking through them. The Sega Master System was one of those systems that not many people had back in the day. I remember when Macy's had their Sega displays up on the third floor of their stores at Deerbrook and The Esplanade in Kenner Louisiana. Speaking of the original Deerbrook Macy's which is now the Dillard's, the third floor is very retro. I had not been up there in a very long time.
Everyone had a Walkman back then, it is like a cell phone in 2021. I really miss those days, even the crappy radio tapes that I made on tape recorders.
Thanks for sending over the links, I will check them out.
Urban Prairie Schooner, I was really hoping that store would stick around for a while. I may have a chance to visit that store in March. I also read that the last anchor (Dillard's) at Cortana Mall is closing in April. Amazon will be building a warehouse on the property once they can tear the mall down. It is really crazy how fast Cortana fell despite the mall being the largest in the State of Louisiana.
DeleteFirst, I hope you and all your readers are able to stay warm during this winter storm. We lost power for about 42 hours, but it's back on now. I assume the power being on is only temporary though. I know some people don't have running water either. These are certainly rough times for many in Houston and probably across the south.
DeleteSpeaking of Sony Walkmen, I had to dig out one of my Sony Walkmen for this storm. I wasn't playing tapes on it, but rather I wanted it to listen to the radio and most of my Walkmen do have at least FM radios on them. I picked out my Sony Walkman WM-F2 from 1982. It's got an FM stereo tuner and it also records onto cassettes. It's a fancy model, but the cassette mechanism doesn't work. It probably needs a new belt. Anyway, that doesn't matter, I just needed it for the radio so I could stay tuned in while the power was out and I was conserving phone power.
The Willowbrook Mall Macy's (the original one that is Dillard's now) had the Sega Master System display on the third floor as well. I know I got at least one game from there. I went to the Willowbrook Dillard's 3rd floor maybe 10-12 years ago and it looked pretty retro as well, but I can't remember much about it other than that.
Thanks for the update about the Target in the old Randall's. I figured it was small, but I suppose it's even smaller than I thought based on the photos. I'll have to check it out if I'm in the area.
I did get the update about the Baton Rouge Sears based on the comments from other users. That's too bad, but I can't say it's too surprising. TransformHoldCo looks like they're just about done with full-line stores. It's a real shame.
Cape Kennedy Retail, one of the contributors on the My Florida Retail blog, found one of those Sears Alfie things, Lampert's reaction to Amazon's Alexa, at a thrift store in Florida. The thrift store is an independent one in an old Eckerd that was turned into a Goodwill. The Goodwill then closed and was turned into the independent thrift. It's a pretty neat place and they have some interesting electronic items. You might like checking out the photos of the place.
You're right about the old catalogs and how great it was when one arrived in the mail. Young people won't understand the feeling just as they won't understand how great it was for something to come down the conveyor belt at Service Merchandise or Best, lol.
42 Hours, wow that is a long time. We were without power for 22 hours on a controlled blackout. Our water pressure dropped during the outage but we stayed on. The power grids have gotten a lot better over the last 24 hours so I hope the worst of it is past us. There are a lot of people less fortunate that are dealing with a nightmare right now. Plumbing supplies are going to be tough to come by for the next few weeks, so I can only hope that the city will provide help to those who need repairs.
DeleteI did get several posts written up for the blog during the mess so those will be released once every few days. The final Lake Charles Kmart post is finally up.
I dug out my battery operated Sony radio/CD/tape that I picked up from Sears several years ago. It was a lifesaver since I was keeping my phone off to conserve battery life. I do have a spare Walkman belt or two if you would like to try and fix the tape deck. I gave up on trying to fix some of my questionable Walkmans.
I am glad that the Deerbrook Dillard's still has the original look in most parts of the store. I have not been to the third floor at Willowbrook in ages. It is strange to have a three level anchor in a one story mall. If I get a chance to go up there in the near future, I will let you know how it goes.
I looked at those blog photos, those were pretty awesome. I had to look on Ebay for the Alfie, those are available all over the place for around $10. The JCPenney film/tape converter was a really cool find. Just about all of the Eckerd's charm has been cleared out from the interior of the store, but at least the pharmacy area is intact.
I guess online shopping gives us instant satisfaction these days, but the mail order catalogs were so slow. Unless you are ordering from overseas you get most things within a week. The conveyor belt and the Toys R Us game counter had a lot of great moments for me.
We are not quite out of the danger zone yet with this winter storm. It looks like this evening and the next will be quite cold and below freezing. I suppose it's possible for more people to have burst pipes and the subsequent problems with water pressure for everyone else. Although I was without power for quite some time, I was quite lucky that the water pressure in this area remained steady throughout. Like I said though, we're not clear from the danger yet. Hopefully you and your readers will remain without problems.
DeleteYou're right that plumbing supplies will be in short supply here with so many people needing to replace broken pipes. I'm sure extra loads of drywall will be sent over here for people needing to make repairs to walls that got wet from burst pipes. I'm sure a lot of people who were damaged by Ike, Harvey, and other flooding events are probably having to deal with this now. Winter or otherwise, it seems the natural disasters just don't stop around here unfortunately.
I have the same Sony CFD-S50 boombox that you have. I got mine from the Mall of the Mainland Sears on clearance. I keep it in plugged in in my bedroom to listen to music in there, but I don't keep batteries in it since I normally have it plugged in. I thought about putting batteries in it and using it during the storm, but I have a lot more AA batteries to spare than C batteries (which is what I think the boombox uses, but I have not looked in a long time) so I decided to fish out an old Walkman instead. Anyway, radios are like flashlights if you live down here. You can never have enough of them in case of an emergency and so it's important to keep fresh batteries on hand to power these things.
Thanks for the offer of the Walkman belts. I really need to open these things up and see what the problem is with the cassette mechanisms on these. I've known for quite a number of years that the cassette parts don't work, but it's rather tedious to perform surgery on Walkmen as compared to a regular cassette deck so I have not bothered to investigate these things. Now that I had a reason to get this Walkman out, maybe I will take the chance sometime soon to work on it.
The old Willowbrook Macy's always felt funny to me. It seemed out of place at a mall like Willowbrook with the 3 stories as you say. When it was a Macy's, we used to go up there a lot to see electronics and housewares. The stuff Dillard's puts up there isn't nearly as interesting or things worth seeing, but I ought to go up there just to see how it looks.
The Alfie would be a good thing for the ultimate Sears collector to have, but it's more of an embarrassment than anything to be proud of, lol. But, yeah, while there isn't a whole lot of Eckerdness left at that thrift store, there's more than what's left at most ex-Eckerd locations around here that I know of.
I remember buying Sega Master System games from Toys R Us as well. In fact, I think I might have bought a PlayStation 1 game from Toys R Us. Crash Bandicoot Warped I think. It was a good game. That might have been the last thing I ever bought from Toys R Us that wasn't a registry gift or something like that.
It's good to hear that there will be some updates to the blog here soon. There have been a couple of new posts this week which is great. I'll be posting a reply about the Lake Charles Kmart here in a minute. It seems that there is still a lot of interest in the blog here in 2021 given all the people who are posting comments. It's great to see that.
You are right about the temp drop, we are already below 30 here. I hope everyone stays vigilant and doesn't let their guard down.
DeleteI have a good bit of extra batteries on hand. We have a lot of flashlights and outdoor lights that go through C and D batteries. I also used to have the boombox next to me on my dresser. I had to move it to make way for some other items, so it has a spot in the closet for now.
Let me know about the Walkman band. It has been sitting in a drawer for years.
The Deerbrook Dillard's has a small record selection tucked away in the back of the cutlery area. They had the display at the escalator area initially to try and draw interest. The records they have are your typical pop, rock, and hip-hop selection.
I may get myself an Alfie to add to my collection. This item is one of the last innovative things that Sears management attempted.
Toys R Us was also one of the few retailers that had all systems in one store. I remember Children's Palace didn't have either Sega or Nintendo for a while. A lot of the department stores had Atari, Nintendo, or Sega. Walmart was all in on Nintendo at one point.
It surprised me to be motivated enough to crank out several articles in one sitting. Usually I am spent by the time my first one is done. Getting the massive Lake Charles Kmart post up was a huge step in the right direction. I added more commentary just before I posted the store to make it better.
It looks like tonight will be the last night with temperatures below 30 F for those of us on the northside of Houston. Hopefully the water situation will improve for everyone after that, but we'll have to wait and see how things go.
DeleteMost of my C and D batteries in my battery inventory are Sears DieHard ones that I purchased from the Willowbrook Sears in around early 2019 or so. In fact, most of my AAA batteries are DieHard ones as well. I usually had good luck with those Sears batteries. Even though they were Chinese batteries, they seemed less prone to leaking than modern Rayovac, Energizer, and even Duracell batteries. I've had a lot of problems with the latter three leaking here in the last decade or so. The DieHard batteries might not last as long as, say, a Duracell that doesn't leak, but what good is that if the batteries leak and potentially ruin some rare and/or expensive piece of equipment? I try to take the batteries out of things like Walkmen that I don't use often, but of course I leave batteries in flashlights, clocks, and remotes.
Anyway, I do have a few C and D batteries on hand, but I have many AA batteries that I got about a year ago on sale for a good price at Randall's.
I had a chance to take a look inside the Walkman WM-F2. I'm not sure what exactly the problem is here because the belt seems to be getting traction, but the motor isn't moving. I suppose there might be a problem with the motor. I'll have to get my multimeter out and check that. The belt doesn't appear to be in the best condition, but it's not stretched out either. I don't know, this will need more examination to see if it's something I can fix.
That is true about the Alfie. It's something Sears tried that even Walmart and Target didn't. It didn't work out, but it might be a nice collectable and conversation piece.
I remember you saying some time back that Dillard's has a small record department now. That's pretty neat, I really need to check that out.
Wal-Mart did have Sega stuff at least at one time in the 1980s because my Sega Master System came from the Copperfield Wal-Mart in 1988 I think. Wal-Mart at the time had the SMS on display with the NES and it was there that it became obvious how much nicer the graphics were on the SMS. Sega's availability at Wal-Mart may have varied because Sega was having a lot of issues back then. When they first sold the SMS, it didn't sell well at all so Sega had Tonka Toys try to sell it. Tonka may have used their connections to get the SMS into places like Wal-Mart, but the SMS still didn't sell well so Sega took the rights back and sold the SMS themselves again (and it still didn't sell well). At least they did have better luck with the Genesis, but I can't remember who all sold that. I know Montgomery Ward did for sure.
Toys R Us was the go-to place to see obscure consoles like the Atari Jaguar, TurboGrafx-16, and stuff like that. They had the most selection of games and consoles for quite a number of years until places like FuncoLand started opening.
The Lake Charles Kmart post is a good one. I'm sure your readers will enjoy that one. Kmart posts have made up so much of the blog over the years so it's hard to believe the McAllen post will probably be the final Kmart post on the blog. Maybe after you're done posting the McAllen post, maybe you can go back through all your Kmart photos and re-post your favorite ones and your favorite Kmart memories just to give Kmart a nice finale on the blog. Of course, there is always the possibility of covering stores which have opened up in old Kmarts on the blog.
I was glad to take down my extra winterization stuff and pull my plants back out into the sunshine this afternoon. We dug out a few plants to put them inside to save them from the freeze. Most of the bigger things we were unable to save have dead leaves already. I put in a lot of work before the temps dropped so we did alright once the power went out. I am also glad the temps did not drop below 30 degrees for very long last night.
DeleteI also have an 8 pack of C Diehard Sears batteries. I am the same way with my electronics, if I don't use it frequently the batteries are taken out. I have had way too many problems with leaking batteries over the years.
I wonder if the suspect motor would cost more to replace than the Walkman itself. That reminds me, I wonder how my tapes are doing. I left them in the garage during the freeze. That will be a project for another day.
The Sega Master System certainly did have better graphics than the NES. It was just missing a major title. Alex Kidd was the game I remember Sega advertising a lot in those days, but I know the system had a lot of good hidden gems.
Toys R Us was probably the last major big box store that had a great selection of video games and accessories. All of the major retailers including Gamestop have really cut back on video game selection. Target has really cut back on an already cut back video game selection in their remodeled stores. Gamestop has continually increased the amount of collectibles in their stores.
I will not rule anything out in the future for Kmart posts. Maybe one day we will vacation in Australia or New Zealand and I can visit one of those stores. Maybe an NYC trip could happen for us. I like the idea of putting together a favorites photo post of Kmart visits. I still need to finish that Kmart article about Texas City that I started several years ago.
A trip to Australia or New Zealand would be awesome. They love Kmart down there. Of course, their Kmarts are very different from ours, but it would be very neat to see what their Kmarts are like.
DeleteThe Kmart situation in Texas City was very strange and is probably worth documenting. It's not too often that there are two ex-Kmarts right across the street from one another. Of course, one has now been torn down and turned into an HEB and the other has recently been subdivided and turned into a Harbor Freight Tools and some other stuff. That area has seen a bit of a retail renaissance since HEB moved into the old ex-Kmart pad. The Goodwill in the old ex-Randall's/Albertsons spot was turned into an Aldi and Ross even though Goodwill was still operating out of there. I suppose the developers kicked Goodwill out once better options came up.
Of course, the newer of the ex-Kmarts in Texas City had a very colorful history with it being a former Woolco, Wal-Mart, Bud's, Venture, Kmart, BP offices, Marathon offices, and now Harbor Freight and other things.
I think your tape should be fine. Cassette tapes are remarkably hardy. In some ways, heat is more of a problem than cold since heat can warp the cassette shells which then causes alignment problems on playback.
Yes, if the motor is dead in that Walkman, the only hope to fixing it cheaply is finding another broken Walkman that has the same kind of motor that works. I'm probably going to deem this one to be a lost cause. It's still usable as a radio and it looks neat as a display piece so it's not completely useless.
Sega tried to pitch Alex Kidd as their version of Mario, but that didn't work out too well. There were some good Alex Kidd games, but my favorite SMS game was Wonderboy in Monsterland. It was a fun game that was harder to beat than most NES games, and it had great graphics compared to NES games, but hardly anyone knew about it. I got that game from the North Oaks Mall Target. Sega did eventually release a Sonic the Hedgehog game for the SMS, but that was too little too late to save it. I think the SMS Sonic came out after the Genesis version and it might have been the same as the Game Gear Sonic. Of course, the Game Gear was another technologically superior flop. Sega had a lot of those, lol.
A trip to New York is the more likely situation, we have been talking about making that trip for years. It is a bucket list item at this age, lol.
DeleteI haven't been to that area of Texas City in close to 5 years. It sounds like things have really changed for the better. That is one good and unfortunate part of living in this area. It is good because building rarely sit vacant, but bad because you have to make sure to document things when you have the chance.
I need to pull my tapes out, it has been way too long since I fired up any of my cassette players.
The Gamegear was a really impressive system. The Nomad was another Sega flop that should have done well. I don't think I have tried out Wonderboy in Monsterland. I have a 50 game Sega Genesis collection game for my Switch, but that game is not on it. There is the Genesis version of Alex Kidd and some Sonic games in the collection. There are not a lot of games these days as brutal as the 80's era games. Games are certainly more complex, but the challenge is watered down in a lot of games.
I read that the Baton Rogue Sears is closing. One of the last Sears Grand stores (which is in Thornton, Colorado) is also closing.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellisicky/2021/02/13/sears-continues-on-a-path-of-closing-more-of-its-stores-only-28-remain/?sh=75db43e15aad
Thanks for the update, I think this year will be the end for Transformco.
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