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Black Friday, holiday sales surge won’t be enough for many retailers

Black Friday and total holiday sales are on track to break records. According to Adobe Analytics online retail sales on Thursday are expected to hit $4.4 billion, up 18.9% year-over-year.

But that spike in business won’t necessarily help those troubled retailers who are expected to close more brick and mortar stores.

Greg Maloney, JLL Retail President and CEO, told Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade stores that have been delivering the customer what they want will continue to do well. But for those that are flailing it’s a different story.

“What we're doing is recycling some of the retailers that aren't really doing that well,” said Maloney. “The ones that are doing well, they're opening more stores and we're getting a lot more product in there.

BRAINTREE , MA - NOVEMBER 29: Anne Gilman, of Dracut, departs South Shore Plaza in Braintree, MA after shopping on Black Friday, Nov. 29, 2019. (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
BRAINTREE , MA - NOVEMBER 29: Anne Gilman, of Dracut, departs South Shore Plaza in Braintree, MA after shopping on Black Friday, Nov. 29, 2019. (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Store Closures Create Opportunity

More than 7,000 retail stores have closed so far this year, according to Coresight Research. Among them KMart, Sears (SHLDQ), GNC (GNC), Walgreens (WBA) and Gap (GPS) to name a few.

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When all is said and done, Coresight Research estimates 12,000-plus retail stores will be shuttered in 2019. In 2018, 5,864 retail stores closed.

The winners in this retail battle, pure play online retailers that are turning to physical stores.

“Online pure play retailers are expected to open about 850 stores here in the next five years,” explained Maloney. “So we're going to see we're going to see it continue to absorb some of the square footage that these closers have produced for us.”

Many of these anchor stores are department stores like J.C. Penney (JCP) and Macy's (M) which have suggested they're looking to close more stores next year.

“A lot of these department stores are not paying a lot of rent. There were really traffic drivers,” said Maloney. “That's why we call them anchors. So, as some of these close and we can repurpose that space into more productive, rent paying tenants, it does quite well. But there are going to be closures of additional department stores were anticipating it in 2020. We've been very resilient here in the past five years, and I think we'll do the same in the next two to three years.”

Tracey Marx Bernstein is a senior producer for Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade and YFi AM.

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