Amazon and
Walmart claim another victim
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| Providence, circa 1930. All photos from Benny's website gallery |
Press
release from Benny’s headquarters issued Friday, September 8, 2017
(Esmond, RI) – Benny’s stores, for 93 years a unique family-owned
fixture in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Southeastern Massachusetts retailing,
will cease operations at all locations, effective at the close of 2017, the
company announced today.
Citing the desire of the Bromberg family ownership to retire from the
operation of the retail chain, the company will begin winding down operations
at their 31 locations and distribution center effective immediately.
The goal is to
complete this process by the end of the 2017 calendar year.
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| circa 1963 |
The disposition of the company’s real estate holdings – Benny’s owns
the land and structures for nearly all of the store locations throughout the
region – is still being determined.
The company has been
fielding offers on those real estate holdings and any relevant developments
will be announced at the appropriate time.
Unfortunately, this closure will impact the company’s 715 employees, of
which 386 are full-time and 329 are part-time employees.
“As proud owners of Benny’s this is an emotional time for us,” said
Arnold Bromberg.
“Benny’s has been
something the Bromberg family has invested enormous amounts of capital, time
and energy in for nearly a century in this region. We take great pride in what
our retail stores have meant to our employees and many loyal customers for so
long. But it is simply time.
"Our current ownership is all at the age where we
would like to retire from the business and spend more time with our families,
and we have collectively judged that the always competitive retail landscape
has shifted in a way that makes it almost impossible for small, family-owned
chains like ours to reasonably compete moving forward.
We’ll miss our employees, who have been such a big part of what has
made Benny’s successful for so many decades. So many of them are well-known to
our customers and are literally part of the Benny’s DNA,” said Bromberg.
“It is vitally important to us that we perform this closure the ‘right
way,’” said Bromberg.
“We intend to wind
down the business in an orderly, structured way, at the same time focusing our
efforts on the most responsible way to dispose of the real estate we own with
an eye toward future use. It is also important to all of us that our community
knows that this is a calculated business decision based on our knowledge of the
retail industry and where it is going in the future.
“That future is not
so bright for small, family-owned chains like ours. We’ve lived and breathed this way of doing business
for a long time, but we could not, in good conscience, leave the business to
the next generation of our family when these market conditions would so clearly
conspire to work against them,” said Bromberg.
The closure of Benny’s marks another illustration of how challenging it
has become for retailers to compete in the current retail climate.
According to Fung Global Retail &
Technology, they are projecting 9,452 store closings in 2017, up 53 percent
from the number of doors that went dark amidst the Great Recession in 2008.
The
Fung analysis cites the rise of e-commerce, the habit of Millennials to spend
more on experiences and less on goods and services, and tougher retail
competition all around as reasons fueling the downward trend.
“We feel that Benny’s has become part of what makes our small corner of
the world so special. We’ll miss our loyal customers and our employees – friends
and neighbors – generations of whom have shopped our stores for the past 93
years and have referred to Benny’s as ’my favorite store’. As we wind down this
business we want to do our best to ensure that our mark on local retail history
will be as positive and lasting as possible,” Bromberg concluded.