Party City closing all stores and Big Lots "going out of business" sales

As public officials continue to tell us the economy is going well, the Retail Apocalypse continues apocalypting in the background.  The word just came out that Party City is shuttingdown all of its  stores, and also that Big Lots is bankrupt and beginning "going out of business" sales.  Two more well known national chains of retail stores are going under.  This video above tells the story of the rise and fall of Party City.  It's December 20th, 2024 as I write this, office Christmas/holiday party season, and a week and a half before New Year's Eve.  Did everyone stop partying?  

I live in the San Fernando Valley these days, a place where there's a lot of wealth in the general area.  But one Big 5 just closed, and a Guitar Center store just closed as well, not to mention all of the 99 Cents Only stores that all closed down months ago.  This is in an area where there are hundreds of "mom and pop," privately owned, brick and mortar stores that are still in business.  But as the flood of pandemic stimulus money got spent, business has slowed back down for many stores, and major shutdowns are happening again.  Here's a video about the downfall of Big Lots.

The Rise and Fall of Big Lots

There are a whole bunch of reasons for these stores closing down, like the rise of online sales, getting bought out and loaded up with debt by private equity companies, and the sales slowdown of the pandemic.  These factors are part of the bigger picture of why these particular chains have closed down.  In any case, two more chains are going under, and hundreds of large stores are going to become vacant soon in cities across the United States.  

The term "Retail Apocalypse" popped up around 2016, as chain store closures and dead malls became a trend.  In reality, many stores had been closing for a decade before that, but those closures increased dramatically around 2015-2016-2017, as online sales surged.  Chalk up a couple more large chain closures to the list of dozens of other retail chains that have become extinct, like Toys-R-Us, Radio Shack, and others.  

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As the recession deepens, the Retail Apocalypse continues...

As most of you know now, the response to the Covid-19 pandemic by The Fed and U.S. government created about $6 trillion in new money, which it pushed into the U.S. economy.  The reason was to buoy up the economy during the mandatory lockdowns.  All this money put the Retail Apocalypse, the closing of thousands of retail stores in the last decade, on hold for three years or so.  Now that consumers have hit the wall financially, the Retail Apocalypse is gaining steam again.

This video lists over 5,200 individual store closings that have already been announced, and most of them will happen this year.  These are not all of the companies closing stores down, just 15 of the big ones.

While that $6 trillion in newly created money made most of us Stimulus Ballers for a while, that money has been spent by consumers, who are now largely broke, and saddled up with high debt again.  That means that ginormous amount of money has mostly flowed into the investment world, where major corporations and ultra wealthy individuals invested it in "assets."  Those assets, which have soared in value since 2020, are stocks in the U.S. stock market, residential real estate, and some other assets like crypto, and collectibles, to a much smaller degree.  

Along the way, when everyday people were flush with cash, retail stores caught a break, and the Retail Apocalypse got put on hold for a while.  People had money, some were hitting brick and mortar stores regularly, and they stayed in business for a while longer.  But the recession that started in 2020, then got put on hold by all that new money, is setting in again.  This time there's nothing visible to stop a recession from happening.  The main economic countries of the world, China, Japan, Europe, and the U.S., are all slowing down, and consumers are struggling worldwide.  That has, once again, slowed down sales in the tradition brick and mortar stores retail world, and thousands of stores are closing down again.  

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