The Fastest Closing Down Retailers in the U.S.

The term 'retail apocalypse' started circulating in the early 2010s to describe the closure of brick-and-mortar stores – largely prompted by the rise of e-commerce. But the real 'apocalypse' for many retail businesses was during COVID-19, with research by the Chain Store Guide estimating that around 31,590 retail & food service locations closed as a result of the pandemic.

Since then retail has struggled to get back on its feet. According to an analysis by CBS, many of the closures happening in 2024 are a result of ongoing trouble dating back to the pandemic and before.

Many well-known retailers (like CVS and Family Dollar) have recently made headlines announcing upcoming store closures. To gauge how this is unfolding in real-time compared to a year ago, we counted the number of physical locations open in 2024 and compared these to last year's figures.

We obtained the most recent 2024 count of physical locations for 94 of the most common US retailers, as well as the latest available physical location data from 2023. We then categorized this data by industry type to derive specific insights.

Key findings

Fossil is the fastest closing-down retailer in the study (with 88.8% of stores closing).
The 2nd and 3rd fastest closing-down retailers are Rite-Aid (-20.8% stores) and Williams-Sonama (-14.5% stores).
Camping World has expanded by 67.7% in the past year, the greatest growth of any retailer in the study.
The 2nd and 3rd fastest-growing retailers are Petco (+19.7% stores) and Circle K (+18.4% stores).
Per category, pharmacies were hit hardest, with 3.8% of stores closing in 2024.
Beauty boom: the beauty retailer section has grown by an average of 8.6%.

The fastest closing-down retailers

It's not been a good year for Fossil. The accessories company's longtime CEO stepped down, and after a U.S. patent lawsuit, they had to withdraw from the smartwatch business. All this trouble saw Fossil take a net loss of $157 million in 2023 with the company announcing they would be closing underperforming stores.

And the company did. Nearly all (88.8%) of stores were shuttered, dropping from 143 stores throughout the U.S. to just 16 in a year (a 127 difference). This is the greatest percentage drop in the study.

America's Fastest Closing Down Retailers

Some physical closures aren't just an inconvenience, they can endanger people's health. To avoid bankruptcy, Rite Aid is restructuring, and since 2023 one in five (20.8%) pharmacies have closed their doors – the second fastest closing-down retailer in the study.

In 2023, Rite Aid listed 2,130 shops but this number had dropped to 1,687 a year later. Customers of those 443 and counting closed pharmacies will need to find new places to collect their prescriptions or switch to an online service.

Coming third is Williams-Sonoma, which has closed 26 of its stores since 2023, taking the total from 179 to 153 locations or a 14.5% decrease. Although the company's online sales hit $5.7 billion in 2023 – a compound annual growth rate of nearly 17% – its brick-and-mortar stores are flailing.

And that's not the homeware company's only problem. In April 2024, news broke that the company had agreed to pay a huge civil penalty – the largest ever in a Made in USA case.

The fastest-growing retailers

Camping World saw the greatest largest expansion since 2023. Despite the name, Camping World mainly sells RVs (recreational vehicles) rather than tents. It's been a good year for business and early in 2024 Camping World acquired another RV company Ashley Outdoors, and their 15 dealerships.

In total, Camping World has expanded by 88 locations, from 130 in 2023 to 218 in 2024. This is a significant 67.7% increase.

With a 19.7% increase in physical locations, Petco was the second fastest-growing retailer in the list. Once a mail-order veterinary company in California, in 2023 the pet supplies giant listed 1,191 locations, which increased by 235 stores to 1,426 in 2024.

In third position is Circle K, which increased by 18.4%. The chain of convenience stores and gas stations opened 1,080 locations – taking its total count from 5,878 to 6,958. And, if reports prove true, Circle K does merge with 7-Eleven then its presence will expand significantly across the U.S.

The fastest-growing and shrinking retail categories

When we consider the retailers by category, the percentage changes are far more modest, suggesting that a lot of success – or failure – is dependent on the individual retailer, rather than the industry as a whole, or on very specific niches within the industry. For example, in the dealerships and auto parts sector, the number of Advance Auto Parts locations reduced by 6.9% whereas the number of Camping World stores increased by 67.7%. Bearing this in mind, what are the statistics per industry type?

The fastest-shrinking retail categories

Grouping the retailers by category, the retailer type that saw the largest percentage drop in stores was pharmacies. Four pharmacies were on the list: Good Neighbour Pharmacy, Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid.

All pharmacies saw a drop in the number of locations between 2023 and 2024 with the smallest change being Good Neighbour Pharmacy (a loss of 26 locations) and the largest – as we've discussed – being Rite Aid which shut down a huge 443 locations. Overall, the average store closure rate for a pharmacy retailer in the study was 3.8%. The percentage is small, but pharmacy closures can have a huge impact on people's physical well-being, and organizations like Act for Pharmacy are there to help support those affected.

The next fastest-closing down retail type was tech and telecom. There were six tech and telecom retailers in the study, of which half had closed down stores, one had opened no new stores, and two had expanded. Overall, the average store expansion rate was -1.2%. The retailer in the group that suffered the greatest loss was Staples, which shut 95 stores – a 9% reduction.

Sporting goods stores (which included Academy Sports and Dick's Sporting Goods), closed by an average of -1.1% per retailer, as Academy Sports lost two stores and Dick's Sporting Goods 10 stores.

The fastest-growing retail categories

According to the data, there's been a beauty boom. With an average growth of 8.6%, Sephora gained 175 stores in 2024 (growing by 12%) and Ulta Beauty (the other beauty retailer on the list) gained 66 (4.9%). This could be thanks to what economists call the 'lipstick effect' – the observation that consumers buy small luxury items (like lipsticks) even during a recession.

Next, specialty retail stores – like crafts and pet stores – have done well. The average specialty retail store has grown by 4.3%. Within this list, the best-performing retailer was Petco, which opened 235 stores in the past year; a 19.7% growth.

Rounding off the top three are hardware stores. This category considered Harbor Freight Tools, Tractor Supply Co., Ace Hardware, and True Value Co. All these retailers – apart from True Value Co. – opened more than 100 stores. Per retailer, this is an average growth of 3.9%.

Change in the Number of Physical Locations per Category

Methodology

Data correct as of August 2024. To compile the ranking, we took a list of 179 of the most common retailers in the U.S. from the following sources:

We extracted location data from ScrapeHero to find out how many current locations were listed for each company as of August 2024. We compared this data to historical data for 2023, using publicly available sources. These included:

Retailers which did not have physical locations or missing data were removed from the data set leaving a final number of 94 retailers.

Across all retailers, in total, we counted 245,929 locations in 2024 and 243,932 stores in 2023. Using the 2023 and 2024 figures for the number of physical locations per brand we could then determine those thriving, surviving, or at risk of closing.

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