A Los Angeles Times headline in 1995 asked, “Can the department store survive?” A quarter century later, CNN proclaimed that “America has turned its back on big department stores.”
These are just two of many obituaries predicting the imminent demise of the U.S. department store—and all that pessimism has been backed by the data. Department stores have been losing market share for decades, first to big-box discounters like Walmart and Target in the 1980’s and 90’s, and more recently to Amazon. The department store’s percentage of total U.S. retail sales has fallen from about 14% in 1993 to only 2.6% last year.
