Retail landscape changing here, elsewhere

Les Minor, columnist
Les Minor, columnist

Live in a city long enough and you see its face change.

Look in the mirror day after day, and eventually you'll see a different face reflected.

With a face, the effects of time don't always translate to improvement, though age lines may epitomize a certain strength of character and distinctiveness.

With a city, its face change is more an ever-developing collage that morphs through the years and becomes a patchwork expression of changing times, lost and found opportunities, structural features that trend then fade and new marketplaces replacing declining ones.

The face of Texarkana is going through a bit of a makeover in recent months. We've seen some major retail players close their doors: Gander Mountain over the summer, Sears in September, Kmart coming in January.

Dillard's Men's Store, which for years occupied its own space in Central Mall, recently merged into the main Dillard's major expansion across the mall. While the move is exciting and represents an overall gain, it has left a big hole on the south side of the mall.

Nearby, across the northeast parking lot, sits another sizable space that once housed Toys R Us and later a furniture outlet. Two nearby shops have also announced imminent closings.

Except for the last two, these closures represent conspicuous empty floor space where big boxes once thrived.

Each of these departures was by unique circumstances, representing failures of business models, business practices, an overbuilt retail sector, cyber competition.

That's not to say that other businesses won't find homes in these spaces. Beyond their unique scale, they also represent prime locations. They won't go unnoticed.

Nor does it suggest that all big box stores are dinosaurs. Obviously, plenty of box stores are doing well here and elsewhere.

What Texarkana is seeing is not market specific. Many places are seeing similar patterns with both the same and different partners in commerce. Buying trends are shifting, and retailers are testing, prodding, poking, trying to figure out what works with today's consumer.

Downtown is no longer downtown, the way it was in the glory day of department stores.

Downtown Texarkana seems to be trending toward residential, with a nod to an arts and theater district, and restaurants.

As such, downtown could be becoming a new neighborhood.

Interstate 30 has been the new Main Street for a while, and Cyber Space is the new sprawling general store. It has everything.

But having everything isn't always a better thing. And there are trade-offs.

If storefront retailers make going online too attractive, people start staying away from their brick-and-mortars, as some of the retail giants have found out. There are benefits to having customers walking through your doors. Never underestimate the value of the compulsive buy, the visceral experience, old habits, repeat business.

But if you went shopping after eating turkey on Thanksgiving or the next day, Black Friday, there were an awful lot of of people standing in line, arms full of glory, waiting for their turns at the cash register.

And today, a week and a day out from Christmas, stores around town are bustling. The Christmas crowds are out. Energy is everywhere.

Seasonal? Of course. But vigorous none the less.

We know the lure of online gets stronger by the year, but most of our money still gets spent around town, in businesses you can enter and explore, touch and feel, creating dollars for folks you know.

Yes, things are changing. But they have always been subject to change.

Once the general store was a mainstay in every town. Then it wasn't. Then we went to stores with specific product lines, then to collections of stores, strip centers and malls. Then the general store concept took off again with the advent of giant retailers.

Once mail order was big, then it wasn't. But what goes around comes around. Today's version of mail order is online sales. Big and getting bigger. Catalogue sales? See where your keyboard will take you.

But for all these options, most of us still shop local. It's what makes a town a town.

Maybe someday drones with drop our groceries at our doorsteps. But most of us like to test drive our cars before we buy them and open and close the doors and drawers on a few refrigerators before we settle on the winner. We like to examine our produce before we pull out our pocketbook.

There are a lot of factors involved in buying and selling goods. Yesterday's Texarkana does not look like today's, and neither will tomorrow's.

A bad thing? Not at all. More like a market adjustment.

Face it, when it comes to today's shopping experience, it's complicated.

Nobody gets out without a few scratches.

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