By KIRBY ROSS
Phillips County Review
PHILLIPSBURG — During a staff meeting at the local Shopko in Phillipsburg on Dec. 4, company officials dropped a bombshell on its employees — due to financial difficulties, Shopko was closing the Phillipsburg store as well as over three dozen more across nation.
In addition to the pending closure of the Phillipsburg store, the Wisconsin-based discount chain has announced it will be shutting down 38 more locations, with liquidation sales slated to get underway on Dec. 7 and the stores to be shuttered by Feb. 28.
The Phillipsburg location had just opened in March 2016, less than three years ago.
Beginning the year 2015 with 320 stores in 21 states, by 2016 glowing reports regarding Shopko were appearing in the nationwide media, with 65 more new sites having opened in a little over a year.
“The rural population is grossly underserved by retailers, so we’re eager to bring Shopko Hometown to more communities,” Chief Executive Officer Peter McMahon said at the time.
Part of that mass expansion was undertaken when Shopko took over existing ALCO locations, which had filed bankruptcy in October 2014 and was liquidated shortly thereafter, with the Phillipsburg ALCO having shut its doors for the last time in March of 2015.
Despite the recent meteoric growth of Shopko, or perhaps because of it, Shopko is now at extreme risk of following in ALCO’s footsteps according to business analysts.
Last Wednesday, New York-based business and financial news conglomerate Bloomberg News reported “efforts by Shopko Stores to find a buyer have stalled and the Midwestern retailer is making preparations for a bankruptcy filing.”
Bloomberg also notes that an out-of-court restructuring was looking increasingly unlikely, the absence of which would likely result in Shopko being forced to seek the protections of the courts.
Retail Dive, which provides analysis of businesses and business trends to retail executives, reported on Friday that Shopko “has been buffeted by intense pressures in retail, some perennial and some part of more recent changes in American demographics, the economy and innovations like e-commerce, spurring new customer expectations.”
Quick Translation: It’s all about the internet.
Retail Dive states that “retailers that do respond well to new aspects of competition leave less nimble rivals like Shopko even further behind. Legacy retailers like Target and Walmart, for example, have overhauled their e-commerce operations and leveraged their store fleets to blur channels and meet new expectations, turning tables on Amazon but making it that much harder for the likes of Shopko to keep up.”
In the meantime, Shopko has issued a directive to media outlets not to distribute any sales inserts it has provided, and to instead “recycle” them (i.e., throw them away).
Immediately following the Dec. 4 announcement of the closures, local Phillipsburg civic leaders went into “Save Our Shopko” mode, which included taking meetings discussing possible incentives to offer to Shopko to keep the Pburg store open, and an online campaign urging local residents to call the Shopko public relations department to lobby the retail firm to keep the Phillipsburg store open.
In addition to the Phillipsburg store, other Kansas locations that are slated for closing include Russell, Clay Center, Lyons and Larned.