Despite strong sales over the holiday season, Kohl’s experienced slow sales elsewhere in the year and is now forced to shutter more than a dozen of its low-performing stores.
The company made the announcement on Feb. 25 and said that the 18 under-performing stores closing will be listed next month. Kohl’s cited low demand for cold-weather merchandise leading up to the winter months, as much of the North had above-average temperatures.
“We believe that the strategic framework of the Greatness Agenda is working as evidenced by our achievement of five consecutive quarters of positive comparable sales increases. I am particularly encouraged by the 4% increase we saw between Thanksgiving and Christmas. At the most competitive time in retail, customers were choosing Kohl’s,” said Kevin Mansell, Kohl’s chairman, president and chief executive officer. “This strength, however, was substantially offset by softness in early November and in January when demand for cold-weather goods was especially low, resulting in a quarterly comparable sales increase of 0.4%, which was below our expectations.”
The Journal Sentinel noted that closures account for less than 1 percent of the company’s sales. Kohl’s hopes that the closures will free up funds to focus more on better sales initiatives in 2016.