Big lots to close all stores

[thomas64658]

it's the end of an era...
Dad worked for Big Lots from '85-07 when he retired @ 62. ( well,when he started with them, it was still Odd Lots, then, and they were expanding, calling the new stores BIG and Small Lots...
there was some law suit with another company elsewhere in the US that was using the Odd Lots name, the settlement said they could only use the Odd Lots Name within a 90 mi radius of the Home office in Columbus, OH.)
asst. manager,store manager, then the VAST majority he was a District Manager, with 6-12 stores under him at a time. they moved him around quite a bit, but he never moved us. there were a couple years where his closest store was 3 hrs from home. but he insisted on coming home every night.
he Stepped back down to a Store Manger in 2002(?) those last 5 years they moved him through 3-4 different stores.
he's rarely set foot in one since retirement.

fun fact: the big lots superhero character "Closeout Man" was loosely Modeled on my Dad. he was told as much at some Corp meetings.
the original founders of the company, used to Run Rinks, another discount retailer in the midwest, that went out in the mid 80's, and Dad had worked for them for many, many years. in similar Roles.

I remembered it being Big and Small Lots for a while (after it was Odd Lots...I grew up near Marietta, OH). I loved going into Odd Lots...always such cool stuff!

 

[JohnnyO]

like, most Companies anymore, they lost their way when the founders retired, and the Business school/MBA types took over. ( MBA is akin to a Curse word in our house, dad's been through this same cycle with 2 different retailers) they used to truely be a Closeout retailer. when other companies couldn't sell stuff, or went under, they bought the remaining stock, and sold it on to the public...basically what Ollies is today, is what Odd Lots was.

some where in the late 90's/ early 2000's they got away from that, and started having their own stuff made, slowly the closeouts dwindled to non-existent, and then they went HARD into furniture.

basically the company was ruined by the executives extracting all the cash they could... a tale as old as time.

That was basically my take. There is one in my town and I thought they did okay until they filled half the store with cheap furniture.

 

[BaronHK]

The economy hasn't been "fine" in over 20 years.

I remember by my third year in the labor force when the factory jobs all went pouring out of the United States due to the trade normalization with China, NAFTA, and other stuff, and the CEO of the place walked in and said he'd worked out a deal with Walmart where he wouldn't need us anymore.

Nothing else was calling me back so eventually I took a job at Walmart, where I saw the product with his company's logo come in. Used to be made in Muncie, Indiana, then China, then eventually Walmart just went to his suppliers and cloned everything and took his name off the box, and his business ended up firing everyone including the CEO.

Serves him right, I say. But those factory jobs never came back. There was a brief resurgence around 2012-2016 I think, but it never was what it once was.

The reason we're doing well as most of the country isn't, is because hipsters are willing to pay and ungodly sum for things.

If the country ever wants to prosper again, we need to be a country that makes things, and mines things, and builds things. Not just "Oh here's some money that's been propped up by people who hate our guts while they're sucking us dry.

China has lost their appetite for Treasuries and has been dumping hundreds of billions by letting them mature and demanding the full thing with interest, then turning around and buying gold. They even entered a bilateral agreement with Russia where they will trade with each other in their own currrencies.

De-dollarization is well underway.

it doesn't surprise me that low end stores are having trouble first, like the Family Dollar and stuff and Big Lots. The poor people run out of money first.

 

[burbguy82]

They used to be a good place to get overstock items, but now they just have the same old stuff, for more than wal mart