Tt post aug 25, 2017

From today's Blade story, I inferred that the Maumee store was profitable while the Talmadge Rd store and the stores in the Columbus area were losers.

January 2017 Blade editorial

... the retail division lost more than $20 million the last eight years. It has not made an annual profit since 2008.

More from today's, Aug 25, 2017 Blade story:

... hope to fill it with new retailers that, collectively, will duplicate the unusual product selection shoppers once enjoyed there.

I thought that one of the reasons why The Andersons retail stores failed over the past decade was because of its unusual product selection.

The unusual product selection is what attracted me to The Andersons, but obviously, that's not what most shoppers want in a physical store.

The two men already have had leasing conversations with national grocery and hardware/​home improvement chains.

Chain stores, eh? Sounds unique.

They envision “two or three flagship tenants” then filling remaining space with smaller tenants. The building would be subdivided as needed.

It might be safer to make the building some kind of Amazon.com store. That's a way to offer an unusual product selection, along with a grocery store after Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods.

In the chain store world right now, I would cozy up with Amazon if possible.

Aug 24, 2017 WaPo story titled Amazon cuts Whole Food prices in clear signal of sweeping changes to come

Of course, Bezos owns the Washington Post too.

On Thursday, stock prices of rival grocers took a hit on the promise of lower-priced goods at Whole Foods. Shares of Kroger, which was rumored late last year to be considering its own takeover of Whole Foods, fell more than 8 percent. SuperValu, with a network of 2,000 stores across the country, was down more than 6 percent, while Costco slipped about 5 percent.

The Hacker News thread that pointed to the above WaPo story contains over 200 comments. Excerpts from the top comment:

Brick and mortar retailers finally got their way in 2012 when Amazon started collecting sales tax in states where it had no physical presence.

This removed the reason for Amazon to avoid that very same physical presence in so many states.

Now we have local Amazon warehouses with one-day and same-day delivery, Amazon delivery lockers in convenience stores, Amazon-operated delivery vehicles, and soon Amazon grocery stores.