Do you remember that store you used to love as a kid? The Joann’s you bought your first crochet kit from? The Big Lots you and your dad visited to buy a new bed after you grew out of your first one? The CVS where you had your first kiss? Chances are all those places have been bulldozed, digitalized, and methodically removed from everyone’s collective memory.
2024 saw a 69% increase in store closures compared to the previous year. Among the closing stores are some CVS’s, Family Dollars, Big Lots, and, to the dismay of some Liberty students, the Joann’s Fabric in Renton.
Restaurants aren’t safe from this trend either: Outback Steakhouse, Denny’s, Applebee’s and more have seen increasing closures. A lot of sit-down restaurants simply aren’t getting the foot traffic needed to stay open, especially with the growing popularity of online delivery.
Some in-person businesses can’t compete with the popularity and convenience of online shopping, and others feel they can no longer justify the cost of physical locations and are switching to exclusively online retail.
While going fully online can be cost-saving for businesses and convenient for consumers, many don’t think it will be effective in the long-term.
One example is DoorDash, a food and grocery delivery app that’s an important player in the battle between online and in-person shopping. With the tap of a button, a buyer can virtually have any item they want delivered.
Because of how convenient it is, it’s a common occurrence to see Liberty students rushing to the drop-off lane to pick up their lunches from delivery drivers.
“With gas prices going up, I hate going out and using my gas to go places,” junior Kayden Carlise, a DoorDash user, said.
But Carlisle, like others, is wary about how this convenience will affect sit-down restaurants.
“I think we’ll definitely lose respect for the culture of restaurants. They bring a community together and offer diverse food groups,” Carlisle said. “So doordashing is definitely going to take away the importance of those places.”
Like restaurants, stores and malls also function as a place for people, particularly teenagers, to get together and spend time independently outside of school and home.Many, like junior Ananya Koimuttum, find it hard to find spaces to spend time with friends, and with store closures, the options would become even more limited.
“I wish Seattle had more third spaces between home and school; we have some stores, which is nice, but if those stores are closing too, where are we gonna go?” Koimuttum said. “There needs to be other places where we could just go and have time for ourselves.”
In an increasingly online world, though, more and more social connections are being made online. Junior Allyssa Nonis described her experience with her online-oriented younger brother who recently went to the mall to spend time with his friends in-person
“I think there’s a really big difference in seeing these connections made online versus in person,” Nonis said.”He’s so much closer with the people that he spends time with in-person than the people he made friends with online.”
On top of loss of connection, some are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact the increase in online shopping will have on the environment.
In-person, you have more choice in how much plastic you’re buying. You can choose not to get a plastic bag or buy products that come with less packaging, but items purchased online almost always come with more plastic for the sake of shipping.
“A lot of times, stores have their clothes in plastic, and then they put it in a plastic shipping bag with a plastic label on it, so then you end up throwing away like half of what you’re paying for,” junior Megan Smith said.
And all items, whether from online or in-person stores, must be shipped from where they were produced to where they are sold. This process generates excess carbon emissions from the trucks, boats, and commercial jets needed to transport goods. But with online shipping there is another step: getting the item from the store or a warehouse to your home.
Shipping items made across the world in a matter of days is one of the marvels of modern-day consumerism, but is it worth the impact?
“When places like Amazon have to ship out orders to peoples’ houses within a day, the carbon emissions are a lot greater because they have to get it quicker,” Smith said. “It’s an extra step in the production process.”
And some people find that many things simply aren’t practical to purchase online in the first place. Smith finds clothes shopping to be particularly tricky online.
“Women’s sizing is really confusing; I may be a four in jeans at one place, but I’m a six in jeans at another and so I prefer to shop in person to try things on,” Smith said. “I also like to be able to feel the fabric and be like, ‘Oh, is this worth the price?’”
For crafters and tailors at Liberty, this problem is particularly relevant in light of Joann’s Fabric closing.
“I’m sad about Joann’s closing,” Koimuttum said. “It’s obvious you could get things from Amazon, but it’s not the same experience as going there and seeing everything they have and feeling the material.”
The costuming and set design departments of Liberty’s Patriot Players relied a lot on Joann’s as a close and affordable option for fabric and sewing patterns, as well as paints and wood supplies for their intricate sets and props. Now that it’s closing, they aren’t sure where supplies will come from.
“We’ll definitely have to depend on donations and renting clothes more often. We have our own stock of fabric, but it’s going really quickly,” Nonis, who does work for the costume department, said.
Theater manager April Phillips agreed, claiming online shopping isn’t going to cut it.
“Online it said these were purple. No way,” Phillips said, pointing to two very clearly blue chairs. “Shopping online, you can’t touch the fabric, you can’t make sure that it’s what you need.”
With losing access to a cheap, close-by, and reliable place for fabric and crafting supplies, there is an increased sense of anxiety about what might happen to the theater department as a whole.
“At any time, the theater department could be the first on the chopping block for funding because usually the arts are the first to go when there’s budget cuts,” Phillips said. “And that just means this beautiful space and all of that we’ve accumulated to support our program will just sit and go to waste until we get the funding back. We just look at what we have and do the best we can. That’s all we can do.”
And while stores like Joann’s are essential resources to programs like theater, many see them as more than that. Students like Nonis see the closing of local in-person stores as a barrier to self-expression and creativity.
“People are worried that we’re not going to have access to the same materials as before,” Nonis said. “It’s like we’re losing part of ourselves for that.”
When access to physical materials is essential to the process of creating, losing that access can seriously hinder what kinds of projects students are able to work on.
“As nice as it is to have the scenery and the costumes and the props be as professional as we can get them, quite frankly, it’s about the experience that the kids get working on the set and building something that’s important,” Phillips said. “The set just has to be safe and look as nice as we can get it. It doesn’t have to be the best product. It just has to support what the kids are doing on stage.”
Phillips sees the trend towards in-person stores closing as a result of a bigger economic trend.
“Our billionaires do not take the responsibility to consumers seriously. They don’t care about the well being of their employees. They also aren’t taking care of the community around them,” Phillips said. “They need to start caring about their community and the people that they have a responsibility to, and if that were to happen, then it’d be a better world.”
It’s not a change that will happen overnight, of course; in-person retailers are huge players in the local economy, and most consumers are simply uninterested in buying exclusively online. But the rapid success of online shopping has certainly put a financial strain on many brick-and-mortar businesses, and if these trends can be expected to continue, the future of retail may look a lot different.
