4urspace

The Retailers that Continue to Expand in the Physical Space!

February 20th, 2017

As retailers are closing some of their stores, others are expanding their physical locations. These are the retailers that have recently caught my attention.

Ulta Beauty

The retailer will open 100 stores this year, including its first-ever location in Manhattan.

Warby Parker

Warby Parker is making a big commitment to brick-and-mortar. The hip eyewear retailer plans to open at least 25 stores this year.

The new locations, planned for Miami, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other cities, are expected to bring Warby Parker’s total store count to about 70 by year end.

Warby Parker opened its first full-size location in Philadelphia on Jan. 28. The 2,360-sq.-ft. store is in the former space of the famed Le Bec-Fin restaurant.

Blink Fitness, the premium-quality, value-based fitness club, is thrilled to announce the company will be expanding its footprint by entering the Los Angeles metro area in 2017. The company is well established in the New York area with more than 50 open locations and 300,000 members.

Stein Mart

It’s going to be a busy spring for Stein Mart.

The Florida-based chain will open five stores this spring –– the first phase of its 2017 store plan to open a total of 11 new stores. The remainder of the locations will open in the fall.

Fabletics

The e-commerce retailer, which opened its first brick-and-mortar outpost in 2015, plans to open 12 stores in 2017, giving it a total of 30 locations throughout the continental United States in just 23 months.

The new stores, opened in close partnership with mall developers, including Simon, Westfield, and Macerich, will average just over 2,200 sq. ft., and open before fall 2017. The first opening will take place in Frisco, Texas in March 2017, followed by Indianapolis, Indiana; Lexington, Kentucky; Schaumburg, Illinois; Boulder, Colorado; and Portland, Oregon in second quarter 2017.

Beginning in July 2017, additional Fabletics stores will open in Scottsdale, Arizona; Cerritos, San Jose, San Francisco and San Diego, California; and Paramus, New Jersey.

The Container Store

The nation’s leading home storage products retailer is going to try on a smaller footprint.

The Container Store Group said it plans to open locations in Cleveland; Livingston, New Jersey; and Staten Island, New York, as well as relocate its store in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The retailer also plans to open a store in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that will be the first of its new mid-size store format.

Dollar General

Dollar General isn’t boasting when it calls itself one of America’s fastest-growing retailers.

The extreme-value discounter will open 1,000 stores and two distribution centers in 2017, resulting in the creation of approximately 10,000 new jobs. The announcement comes as Dollar General is testing a new, smaller-store format under a new banner.

In mid-January, Dollar General debuted its smaller-store format, called DGX, in Nashville. The 3,400-sq.-ft. store is designed to serve urban shoppers in a convenient, easy-to-shop format. The merchandise mix is geared toward instant consumption and includes a soda fountain, coffee station and grab-and-go sandwiches.

Aéropostale

Aéropostale, a specialty retailer of casual apparel and accessories targeting 16 – 22 year olds, is reopening more than 500 doors across the United States.

Intimissimi

Intimissimi, the Italian brand that has become the market leader in underwear since its creation in 1996, opened its first US location at the Garden State Plaza Mall in December. Intimissimi brand is a part of the successful Italian company, Calzedonia S.p.A Group.

Wendy’s

The chain wants to add approximately 1,000 locations by 2020, reported Nation’s Restaurant News.

Wendy’s currently has a little over 6,500 locations worldwide. The new units would be located in North America, where the brand has commitments from operators to build at least 500 locations, and internationally, where it wants to grow from its existing 439 locations to 850 units, the report said.

Key to its growth strategy is a new, more flexible design that will allow Wendy’s to open in smaller spaces.

Amazon

The e-retailer wants to open 2,000 Amazon Fresh grocery stores in the U.S. within the next 10 years, according to documents obtained by Business Insider. Amazon will start by opening 20 stores over the next couple of years as a pilot program, while also testing out two different store concepts.

Lidl

Lidl is a global grocery juggernaut, with 10,000 stores in 27 countries. It has made its name offering a limited assortment of goods, many of them private label, at ultralow prices.

Now, it is ready to descend on America, potentially throwing a disruptive curveball in a retailing category that is already scrambling to adapt to new pressures, including the growth of online shopping and competition from nontraditional rivals such as drugstores.

Lidl is set to open 20 stores this summer in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, an earlier debut than the 2018 time frame that it initially targeted. Within 12 months of opening its first U.S. stores, it is slated to have 100 locations up and down the East Coast.