Columbus, Ohio — Discount retailer Big Lots plans to close 35 to 40 stores this year, according to an SEC filing submitted by the company. Big Lots saw a 10.2% year-over-year decrease in net sales in the first quarter of 2024.
“While we made substantial progress on improving our business operations in Q1, we missed our sales goals due largely to a continued pullback in consumer spending by our core customers, particularly in high-ticket discretionary items,” says Bruce Thorn, president and CEO of Big Lots. “We remain focused on managing through the current economic cycle by controlling the controllables. As we move forward, we’re taking aggressive actions to drive positive comp sales growth in the latter part of the year and into 2025, and to maintain year-over-year gross margin rate improvements, all driven by progress on our five key actions.”
Thorn continues: “As a reminder, our five key actions are to own bargains, to communicate unmistakable value, to increase store relevance, to win customers for life with our omnichannel efforts and to drive productivity. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but remain confident that the five key actions are putting us on the right path to turn around our business.”
In addition to the closures, the company announced plans to open three stores this year, though the filing cites “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue.”
In a June press release, the retailer attributed declining sales to a “challenging consumer environment.”
Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Big Lots, Inc. operates more than 1,300 discount stores in 48 states. For more information, visit www.biglots.com.
SOURCE: Big Lots