Category Archives: downtown retailing

Downtown Retail Part II. Food: Capture What You Should Own

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People spend a lot of money on food. In 2006, the average total expenditures for food by households in the bottom, middle and top income quintiles were $3,195, $5,614 and $10,212 respectively. And the need to eat is fairly inelastic. Proximity and convenience are major factors driving food purchases, with higher fuel costs just increasing their strength. Food emporiums and eateries bring more customer traffic into small and medium-sized downtowns than any other kind of retail. Additionally, working parents have been able to juggle increased time spent at work and with their children by reducing their time invested in food preparation and food shopping. Therefore, even with the rising cost of food, small and medium downtowns can and should own the food expenditures of local residents.

Restaurants – First, we’ll start with the obvious. Downtown restaurants play critical economic and social roles for their downtowns and entire communities. They are not only places where people eat, but also where people spend time with significant others, friends and family – allowing time-pressed consumers to both dine and meet their needs for “quality time.” Good restaurants help reinforce the downtown as the Central Social District and the social heart of the community. Notably, restaurants often also serve as entertainment venues for their downtowns. Restaurant niches have been pivotal in the revitalization of downtowns – with local restaurateurs opening in many locations that national and regional retail chains initially bypass. While the National Restaurant Association projects slower growth for restaurant expenditures in 2008 as compared to 2007, it still projects growth. Finally, an analysis of BLS data shows that food-away-from-home spending has been increasing faster than inflation, with the largest increases in households in the top income quintile. In 2006, households with children accounted for 40% of all food-away-from-home expenditures. Downtowns with higher income residential neighborhoods and large pools of working mothers should tap into these markets.

Supermarkets and Gourmet Markets – Nationally, households average 2.1 supermarket shopping trips a week, making supermarkets potentially huge generators of downtown customer traffic. For many small and medium-sized downtowns, “food at home” is their most important retail niche: 62% of supermarket shoppers also shop in other nearby shops. However, traditional supermarkets can adversely impact a downtown when they are located in self-contained, pedestrian-hostile shopping centers surrounded by a sea of parking. The good news: Downtown-friendly supermarket chains, such as Whole Foods, that squeeze into tighter urban locations and in mixed-use projects are growing. Additionally, there is a new trend toward smaller downtown food and gourmet markets with stores in the 6,000 SF to 15,000 SF range, including Balducci’s, Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Garden of Eden, Zeytinia and The Natural. This trend towards smaller, often gourmet markets, means it is much easier to locate a quality food market, capable of drawing many customers, in more downtowns without threatening the pedestrian landscape (as traditional supermarkets with their large size and parking requirements do). These stores often take advantage of nearby commuter rail stations and their homeward-bound commuter shoppers. They work well for time pressed shoppers who, often on their way home from work, are shopping without a list for a meal or two and not a week’s worth of groceries. Gourmet food stores also often offer consumers “pick-up” or “prepared” meals that they can simply take home or to the office and reheat – another important retail trend for the time-pressured consumer.

Take Out – As restaurant expenditures are projected to grow at a slower rate in 2008 than in 2007, the National Restaurant Association projects that full-service restaurants will rely more on “take-out, delivery and curbside service to meet Americans’ desire for convenience.” Middle- and upper-income families feeling the squeeze between declining discretionary dollars and time limits (particularly those with two working parents) increasingly will choose take-out as the compromise option. This brings up an interesting issue for downtowns. A large number of auto trips are being generated to stop, order and pick up food. These trips require very short-term use of parking spaces – 15-20 minutes at most. DANTH has found that downtown gourmet markets and local restaurants often do not have enough nearby, short-term parking and as a result their pick-up and take-out sales have suffered (despite pedestrian and commuter traffic). Over the next five years, downtown organizations and their governments may need to look at short-term parking solutions as this niche becomes a strong driver of the downtown economy during tough times.

For the full report on “Food: Capture What You Should Own” visit www.ndavidmilder.com after June 1, 2008 and double click on the red trends button..

This posting was was condensed from my longer report by Mary Mann.

Downtown Retail Part II. Survive, Manage Effectively and Reposition

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It is essential for downtown retailers to keep the proper perspective. While the media frequently ask and answer the recession question, no one to our ken has suggested that we are entering a depression resembling what this nation experienced during the 1930s. Consumers have not stopped shopping, though they may be spending less, purchasing a different basket of merchandise and making consumer purchases based on new weights for the variables in their decision-making calculations. The consumer expenditure pie has shrunk, not disappeared, and merchants will be facing tougher competition to capture their individual slices. Some retailers will close, while others are likely to open, though overall vacancies may increase.

Although it is true that a few firms can grow during a recession — e.g., MTV, Silhouette Blinds, Trader Joe’s, and the iPod were all launched during economic downturns – most retail experts recommend a more prudent response to tough economic times that emphasizes three key objectives: survival, effective management and repositioning. For some downtown retailers, effective management and repositioning will be essential to their survival.

A. Effective Management
To get through the stressful economic conditions anticipated for the coming five years downtown retailers will definitely need to carefully manage their resources. This may require more inventiveness than just making across the board cuts. For example, the need for some form of effective and affordable advertising will be greater than in fat economic times, but finding the money for it and deciding how to advertise can be a real challenge for small merchants when newspaper readership is in a steady decline, print advertising is losing both its effectiveness and popularity, and ad clicks on Google have flattened. 1

B. Repositioning
Tough economic times create good opportunities for downtown retailers to take stock and rethink their businesses. For example, instead of making a 20% across the board cut, a merchant could reposition by cutting out an entire underperforming line and using the money saved to introduce a new one that is better suited to the current economic conditions.

Or the merchant might develop a stronger, yet affordable customer service program to counter his customers’ increased desire for low prices. Along these lines a merchant might devise a program to encourage “customer advocacy.” Advocates – some experts call them Store Apostles — will “like your store, recommend you to others, buy from you and stay with you.” 2 Whether a shop has customer advocates or customer antagonists can have a big impact on its bottom line, especially in tough economic times: a small core group of customer advocates may account for as much as 50% of a store’s sales and profits. 3 A recent study of customer advocates among apparel shoppers found that the two characteristics that were most important to them were that the shopping experience be pleasant and enjoyable and that it is easy to do. 4 The biggest attitudinal difference between an apparel store’s advocates and its antagonists was on their perceptions of whether or not the store had an “always fresh and new product selection.” 5

Customer antagonists can pose a real problem: about 31% of shoppers tell many people about their bad experiences and 48% of customers will avoid a shop because someone told them about having a bad experience there. 6

C. Strengths Of The Unscathed
A recent magazine article identified some retailers that appear to be weathering the current recession unscathed. It is probative to review the explanations given for their enviable situations: 7

• Tiffany & Co.: “… wealthy folks still have Valentine’s Day and wedding gifts to buy. Luxury retailers without an international presence are the ones struggling. ‘Tiffany’s end results were pretty good because they don’t only sell to clients looking for affordable luxury but to very rich customers who are not necessarily impacted by the U.S. dollar’ says Dave Sievers, retail practice leader at Archstone Consulting.”
• Wal-mart: “…on the other hand, does better with sales of food and nondiscretionary items, which continue to perform solidly.”
• Urban Outfitters. “No other store looks like them. The catchy windows draw people inside. The funky clothes sell themselves.”
• Costco: “They offer constant newness and incredible value.”
• Walgreens: “…leads the drugstore sector in sales and profits with 1,600 24-hour stores (out of their 6,237 outlets), convenient locations and easy online access.”
• J.Crew: “… made the designer business affordable through brilliant product development. Now customers get cashmere sweaters and tailored suits for less than high-end labels.”
• Kroger: “The largest traditional food retailer in the U.S. is doing well because its stores are convenient and people still need to eat.”

The following factors can be distilled from the above comments:
• A focus on non-discretionary consumer items
• A very upscale customer base
• Convenience
• Value through price alone or a high design quality per dollar ratio
• Merchandise and shopping environments that are unique and frequently refreshed

The discussion above is not exhaustive, but it is hopefully a good place for many downtown merchants to start when thinking about how to adapt their operations to the economic conditions that are likely to dominate their downtowns over the coming five years.

————
Endnotes
1. Julia Angwin and Joseph Hallinan, “Newspaper Circulation Continues Decline, Forcing Tough Decisions – WSJ.com,” Article Here.
Louis Hau, “Newspaper Ad Decline Accelerates – Forbes.com,” Article Here. Robert Hof, “Google: What Goes Up…,” Article Here.
2.Melody Badgett, Maureen Stancik Boyce and Jeffrey Hittner, Why advocacy matters to apparel retailers :Customer focus requires apparel retailers to dress for success, IBM Institute for Business Value, 2007, pp.14, p.2
3. Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske, Trading Up: The New American Luxury, Penguin, New York, 2003, pp.305, p. 18
4. IBM Institute for Business Value, “Customer Focused Apparel Retailer Study.” 2007
5. Melody Badgett, Maureen Stancik Boyce and Jeffrey Hittner, Why advocacy matters to apparel retailers :Customer focus requires apparel retailers to dress for success, IBM Institute for Business Value, 2007, pp.14, p.8
6. Ibid. p.2
7. Kristina Dell, “Retail Stars of the Recession – TIME,” March 18, 2008, Article Here.

Downtown Retail? Part II: Downtowns Will Be Effected To Different Degrees

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The first installment of this retail trends assessment argued that it was very likely that over the next five years retailers would be facing a situation in which consumers would be having significantly fewer discretionary dollars to spend. The first installment also argued that the resulting increased importance of price in consumer decisions would enhance the attractiveness and strength of price-driven value retailers while decreasing the appeal and strength of retailers who offered shoppers opportunities for “trading up.”

However, there will be some variation in the ways that downtowns encounter stressful economic conditions.

A. Regional Economies. There will be significant variation by state – and by region within states – based on their housing markets (not all are tanking), foreign exports (now hot), agriculture (now hot), auto industry (now cold), etc.

B. Shoppers’ Household Incomes. DANTH’s analysis suggests that downtowns in market areas dominated by middle-income households may be stressed more significantly than those that rely on shoppers from either low-income or high income-households.

Downtowns With Lots of Low Income Shoppers.1 In a very interesting piece of research, Cox and Alm have shown that households in the lowest income quintile have a surprising amount of spending power that is far greater than their taxable incomes: though their average household income in 2006 was $9,974, the average total for household expenditures for consumer goods was nearly twice that, $18,153.

Household income correlates with household size. Factoring for this and looking at consumption per person, the difference between the richest and poorest households is just 2.1 to 1, while the income differential between the richest and poorest households is close to 15 to 1. 2

Quite astonishingly, Cox and Alm found that: “The average person in the middle fifth consumes just 29 percent more than someone living in a bottom-fifth household.” 3 This may help explain why, in addition to their population density, “poor” neighborhoods often have bustling shopping districts where merchants can have surprisingly high sales per square foot – e.g., $1,300 PSF.

Cox and Alm explain the surprising purchasing power of America’s poorest households by their financial inflows. They claim that, on average, these lower-income families have access “to various sources of spending money that doesn’t fall under taxable income” amounting to $10,716 per year.4 Cox and Alm claim that the sources of these financial inflows “include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts.” DANTH believes that for the many mired in poverty other “financial inflows” may be involved and that substantial portions of these monies may not be very dependent on the business cycle.

DANTH’s review of the Cox and Alm data suggests that only about 16% of the consumer expenditures made by low income families are for discretionary items. This means that 84% of their expenditures are for items that are everyday necessities and for which their “demand” is rather inelastic.

Many downtowns and large urban commercial districts located in low and moderate income neighborhoods are also buttressed against stressful economic times because they have a number of economic functions that must be performed whether the economy is running hot or cold. Among these functions are hospitals, schools, government offices, courts and transportation facilities. Their employees and the visitors they attract are important customer bases for local retailers.

Dart Westphal is the president of the Mosholu Preservation Corporation in the Norwood section of The Bronx (NY), which is dominated by low- and moderate-income households. The local economy is heavily influenced by Montefiore Hospital and has a vibrant commercial district along Jerome Avenue and Gun Hill Road. Westphal feels that his commercial district is not effected adversely by recessions as much as other districts because:

“Hospitals are counter cyclical or at least more resistant to economic slowdowns than other sectors. In the first place people don’t get sicker or less sick depending on the business cycle and our “customers” are not usually making a purchasing decision they can put off. Put another way demand for hospital services is not elastic. Secondly, as other parts of the economy slow down and prices flatten or decline, the ability of institutions to spend money buying and building things may actually increase, helping the area in general maintain economic stability. Local retailers benefit by continuing to have customers (hospital employees) who have jobs. Also at the ‘inexpensive’ end of the residential market there is less purely discretionary spending so that the money that is in the economy is weighted more heavily to basic necessities…not many people trading up to Gucci.”5

Downtowns With Many Wealthy Shoppers. As one observer has noted, there are:
“…Consumers who will buy …regardless of recessionary woes, the kind of folks, who, to paraphrase a WWD headline a few days ago, are more concerned with getting their high heels wet waiting in a drizzle outside of Chanel’s couture show, than they are about this ‘thing’ called a recession.” 6

While this quote may be somewhat hyperbolic, most retail analysts agree that the consumer behavior of the nation’s wealthy shoppers will not be strongly curtailed by the current stressful economic conditions. Some cite households with incomes above $150,000/yr as the income threshold for such recession resistant shopping behavior.

A review of the following statistics from Cox and Alm indicates why the consumer behavior of the wealthy is so resistant to economic downturns. The top quintile of households earned an average of $149,963 in 2006 and spent a total of $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and “other categories of consumption.” The remainder of their income was spent on taxes, $23,376, and most significantly, savings and investments, $47,171. Indeed, among the top quintile of households, all consumer expenditures – discretionary and non-discretionary – represents roughly 47% of household incomes. The same figures for the middle and lowest quintiles are 77% and 182%.

Downtown retail districts such as Rodeo Drive (CA), Madison Avenue (NYC), Greenwich (CT), Wellesley (MA) and Palm Beach (FL) may expect relatively undiminished levels of affluent shopper traffic.

Many “luxury” retailers also developed significant merchandise lines and sales channels that targeted middle income shoppers wanting to “trade up.” They are now being squeezed to the degree that their trading up sales contributed to their bottom lines. They probably will continue to be stressed as long as middle-income shoppers feel they have declining discretionary dollars. These “mass luxury” retailers are often located in strong, revitalized downtown commercial centers such as Westfield (NJ), Englewood (NJ), Old Pasadena (CA), Bethesda (MD), etc. that have lots of upper middle income shoppers.

Downtowns With Mostly Middle Income Shoppers. The first installment of this retail trends assessment detailed the increasing constraints on the discretionary expenditures of middle-income households and noted the importance and susceptibility of dual income households with children. At this point of the analysis it is useful to clarify the implications of this finding for downtown retailers and their downtown organizations.

Working on this assessment DANTH has concluded that:
• For the vast majority of downtowns, dual-income middle class households with children are a very important potential consumer market. They represent a lot of the spending power in a downtown’s trade area. The working women in these households are their most important potential shoppers.
• This has been the case for about 20 years
• Although a few individual merchants in a downtown may succeed with this strategically critical market segment, most downtowns have failed to make local shoppers from dual income households steady retail customers.
• The relatively few downtowns that have successfully developed a dual income female shopper customer base – e.g., Westfield (NJ) and Englewood (NJ) – have been shining examples of downtown retail revitalization
• It is noteworthy that, currently within the downtown revitalization community, there seems to be agreement that the best strategy for revitalizing a downtown’s retail base is to have multi-use redevelopment projects that bring in young professionals (a.k.a. yuppies or the “walking wallets’) and the empty-nesters. When this strategy works the yuppies and empty nesters help create an array of retail offerings and a shopping environment that then can attract shoppers from dual income families
• The yuppie-empty nester-mixed use retail revitalization strategy takes a lot of time to implement, requires large financial investments and usually entails enduring grueling local government permissions and approvals processes
• Strategically, what most downtowns need – especially those that are small and medium sized– is a strategy for attracting the working mommy shopper that is cheaper, quicker and less expensive than the yuppie-empty nester redevelopment strategy.
• Such a strategy will help many downtown retailers and their downtown organizations to cope with the current tough economic conditions.

The pursuit of such a strategy will serve as a filter in the remainder of this assessment.

In our consulting assignments and in our visits to downtowns across the nation, DANTH has observed that in most small and medium-sized downtowns that have successfully attracted working mommies there are other operations that provide merchandise and services for children – e.g., schools; apparel, toy and hobby shops; dance and martial arts studios, etc. These downtowns also tend to have non-retail functions such as entertainment and “pamper” niches that generate traffic retailers can feed on. These observations will provide another filter in the discussion that follows in later postings.
——————————-
ENDNOTES:
 1. A caveat: This analysis does not claim or imply that our nation’s poor face anything other than dire and unacceptable economic conditions. However, in our assignments in Jamaica Center (NY), Fordham Road(NY), Downtown Brooklyn (NY), Norwood (NY), West New York (NJ), Elizabeth (NJ), etc., we have found vibrant low to moderate –income, ethnic shopping centers with surprising total retail sales. We believe this analysis helps explain why those districts are strong.
2. W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, “You Are What You Spend,” New York Times, February 10, 2008
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Dart Westphal, President, Mosholu Preservation Corporation in an email communication.
6. “Fashion Notebook: The Luxury Market, The Recession and What Marketers Can Do About It.” WWD is an acronym for Women’s Wear Daily, a fashion industry paper. Article Here.

 

Downtown Retail? Part I: Buckle Your Seat Belts, We’re in for a Bumpy Ride

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The DANTH, Inc. 2008 Trends Assessment
Every five years – a period known as a lustrum – DANTH Inc. prepares a trends assessment. One of the areas we analyze is downtown retail. Following is a synopsis of the first part of our two-part retail trends study. (For the full report, email [email protected] or visit the trends page on www.ndavidmilder.com.)

What we’ve found is that downtown retailing is entering into a period of stresses – some old, some new – which are detailed below. However, we have also discovered that downtowns are experiencing a number of trends that can be leveraged to cope with these stresses. These more positive indicators will be detailed in our next report and blog posting.

So first, the Bad News. . .

1. There will be growing constraints on consumer spending:
• Income Growth Will Continue To Be Modest for the Next Few Years. And even as income grows slowly, the costs of a standard middle class life will likely outpace that growth.
• Home Values Are Declining. At this point, everyone must be aware of the subprime mortgage crisis and other factors bearing down on home values, which are not expected to recover for many years. As a result, Americans will have less home equity and less ability to leverage that equity for discretionary spending, as they avidly have done over the past decade.
• Energy, Medical, Child Care and Education Costs Will Continue to Rise. It is no longer inconceivable that gasoline could hit $4 or $5 a gallon. BLS data shows that medical costs have risen 168% faster than the consumer price index over the past ten years – a trend that is likely to continue. Child care costs – essential for working mothers – are also increasing faster than the CPI, and college education has experienced a growth rate in tuition and fees over the past decade that is the highest in 30 years. These are all creating pressure on discretionary spending.

2. Recovery From An Anemic Job Market Probably Will Be Slow. For some time the nation experienced scant job growth. We teeter on recession. It is taking longer for the nation to recover jobs after each recession. Trends indicate that the job market would probably take 46 months to recover the jobs lost from a recession.

3. Boomers Are At It Again. As the boomers soon begin to sell their large suburban homes, this will create further downward pressure on home prices. While many downtowns are basing their revival on attracting “empty nesters” it will be increasingly difficult for those nesters to get their money out of their homes.

4. Value Retailers Are Still Growing. Value retailers continue to gain market share on both price and fashion/design as retailers like Target and Kohl’s and, increasingly, Wal-Mart appeal to consumers with “cheap chic” products. More affluent consumers as well as lower-income shoppers are drawn to these stores as the tightness of discretionary dollars penetrates and seeps up the income ladder.

5. Trading Up May Be Stalling. The “New Luxury” or “Trading Up” retail trend –running counter to value retailing –has succeeded by pinpointing middle- and upper-middle-income consumers who are willing to spend more on certain goods that provide superior quality, performance and emotional appeal (think Coach, Calloway Golf, Williams-Sonoma, Tiffany, Trader Joe’s and Sam Adams Beer). This retail trend has supported the renaissance of many downtowns, but the factors presented above indicate that this behavior may be significantly diminished in coming years as discretionary incomes are constrained.

And now that we’ve got you drowning your sorrows in that Sam Adams (or perhaps you’ve traded down to a Miller Light), don’t despair! “Downtown Trends II: Revenge of the Mommies, the Foodies and the Indies” is coming soon and the news gets a little better.

This posting was written with the deft assistance of Mary Mann.

An Ethnic Downtown With Many Retail and Fast Food Chains

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For many years downtown revitalization experts lamented that large, ethnic downtowns — those with lots of African American and Hispanic shoppers — were being avoided by major retail chains.

That is certainly no longer the case. Here, in New York City, one of the hottest retail locations is along 125th Street in Harlem. Many retail and fast food chains are also occupying important storefronts in the outer borough downtowns such as Jamaica Center in Queens, Downtown Brooklyn and Fordham Road in the Bronx. They are also opening in strong neighborhood shopping districts such as Jerome Avenue in the Bronx and and Corona Plaza in Queens.

Below is a list of the national and regional retail and fast food chains that I found on a visit yesterday to Jamaica Center.

I first went to this commercial district with my mother to buy shoes back in 1949, which was toward the end of its “Golden Age.” I continued to shop there occasionally for sports equipment and sneakers until I went away to college in 1958. It was not until the early 1980s that I returned to carry out consulting assignments for Regional Plan Association and the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation (GJDC). Though my involvement in the revitalization of this district ended in the early 1990s, I have continued to visit every few years to take photos and gauge its progress. It’s just two miles from my home office.

The revitalization of Jamaica Center has been a long process, starting back around 1968 with the creation of the GJDC. Over a billion dollars have since gone into the revitalization of this commercial center, paying for such things as the re-routing of a subway line (E train), tearing down an elevated line, building York College, the construction of a one million SF Social Security Building, new court buildings, building a terminus for a monorail link to JFK, etc.

By the early 19980s the quality of the retailers was ebbing and this trend culminated with the closing of two major department stores, Macy’s and Gertz. White shoppers from the northern and western parts of Jamaica Center’s trade area stopped visiting, choosing instead to drive east to the shopping malls in Nassau County.

Many of the other neighborhoods in the trade area had African American households with relatively high annual incomes for Queens. Cambria Heights, for example, recently had a median household income of $69,030, while the median income for Queens was $49,780. Many of the residents in these neighborhoods were civil service workers and teachers, often in dual income households. Though large numbers of these residents passed through Jamaica Center each weekday to use the subway on their trips to and from work, they, too, avoided shopping there because the retailing had come to focus on low income and teenage markets and the area had developed a reputation for street crime and drug use and sale. Nevertheless, the pedestrian traffic along Jamaica Avenue continued to be a “beehive of activity” and some of the merchants were doing $s/SF that rivaled those of retailers in some of Manhattan’s best locations.

I was greatly encouraged by my recent visit and feel that the end game, the “take off” phase of Jamaica Center’s revitalization is in sight. The primary reason for my optimism is the recent announcement of a major project that will bring over 300 market rate housing units into the downtown, with a number of similar projects on the drawing boards. Another reason is that the retailing’s strength now seems to be more than shops featuring “urban wear,” with chains having a strong middle class appeal opening, e.g., Home Depot, Marshall’s, Zale’s, Nine West, Old Navy. The teens will still shop in Jamaica, but now their parents might as well.

The changing nature of the district’s retailing is also, in my opinion, reflected in the new store facades that have been built in recent years. They are much more attractive, with smaller signage, a better sense of proportion and though the colors used might offend some with Main Street design sensibilities, they are often still very pleasing.

Another indicator of this district’s strength is that commercial rents along Jamaica Avenue recently have reached as high as $150/SF for choice locations.

In the list below I have noted some of the chains that were open in Jamaica Center and have since closed. It should be noted that all of these closures involved chains that were having overall problems.

At the end of the list I have provided a link to a web-based photo album that contains photos of Jamaica Center’s retail chains.

National and Regional Chains in Jamaica Center January 25, 2008

Payless (2 stores)
Gothic Furniture
Quiznos Sub
UPS Store
Java’s Brewin
Game Stop
Burger King
Taco Bell
Pizza Hut
Dunkin Donuts
Subway
McDonald’s (2)
Duane Reade
Walgreens
Sleepy’s
Footlocker Kids (converted to Kids)
Zale’s
Nine West
Radio Shack
Marshall’s
Conway (2)
Home Depot
Fabco Shoes (2)
Footco USA
Jimmy Jazz
Toys ‘R Us (closed, chain in trouble)
Kids ‘R Us (closed, chain in trouble)
Wertheimers (closed, chain in trouble)
Jennifer Convertibles
Rainbow
Ashley Stewart
Tick Tock
Dr Jay’s
Vim
Modells
Cookie’s Department Store
Porta Bella
Strawberry
Parade of Shoes (closed, chain in trouble)
Youngworld
Athlete’s Foot
Shoppers World
Old Navy
The Children’s Place
Gap (closed, chain in trouble)