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Bloomingdale's tries creative way to lure shoppers back. By Fernanda Tronco TheStreet Updated September 26, 2026 9:28 AM Gift Article Store closures have become increasingly common among retailers as they shrink their footprints to adapt to changing consumer habits and rising costs. Coresight Research projects that 7,900 stores will close in 2026, while 5,500 stores will open, resulting in an estimated net loss of 2,400 stores among chain retailers. Founded in 1861 in New York City, Bloomingdale's is an upscale American department store chain known for its designer labels, luxury goods, and signature "Little Brown Bag" shopping bags. Owned by Macy's, Inc. (M), Bloomingdale's has maintained a fairly stable footprint compared to many retailers, The Wall Street Journal reported. Still, the luxury department-store chain knows the importance of giving consumers ongoing reasons to visit in person. Now, Bloomingdale's is joining a major retail trend by transforming its stores to create new shopping experiences. Bloomingdale's creates immersive experiences to bring customers to stores. Bloomingdale's has partnered with The Ritz-Carlton to transform its New York City 59th Street flagship into Hotel Bloomingdale's, an immersive in-store shopping experience running through Oct. 19, 2026. Hotel Bloomingdale's combines The Ritz-Carlton's hospitality with Bloomingdale's fashion, beauty, wellness, home, and travel brands to encourage product discovery. As part of the launch, Bloomingdale's is unveiling Late Checkout: A Ritz-Carlton Story, featuring a curated assortment of more than 55 brands, including 14 that are new to Bloomingdale's. The assortment is organized into five hotel-inspired destinations: Travel, The Spa, Room Service, Souvenirs, and Newsstand. The experience also includes dedicated windows, pop-ups, activations, and an exclusive 26-piece AQUA x Nicky Hilton collection for women and kids. The immersive experiences showcase some of Bloomingdale's most popular brands and include: * Studio 59: A Ritz-Carlton-inspired hotel bar with destination-inspired cocktails influenced by iconic Ritz-Carlton properties. * La Prairie Spa: A limited-time spa residence and retail experience by La Prairie. * Nespresso Coffee Bar: A luxury hotel lobby café offering premium coffee beverages by Nespresso. * Abbode Customization: Complimentary embroidery for Abbode purchases. For customers unable to visit the Bloomingdale's 59th Street flagship, the retailer will also bring the KILIAN PARIS Bar experience to select stores. The art deco-inspired hotel lounge experience will offer specialty cocktails, mixology classes, immersive fragrance consultations, custom bottle engraving, and complimentary fragrance samples. "We're giving customers new ways to discover, explore, and experience Bloomingdale's through unexpected moments, meaningful interactions, and a dynamic mix of fashion, beauty, wellness, and lifestyle," said Bloomingdale's VP Integrated Marketing Kevin Harter in a company announcement. Retailers host unique experiences to encourage in-store shopping. Bloomingdale's is not the only retailer transforming its stores and creating experiences designed to encourage customers to shop in person. Its parent company, Macy's, has used experiential events as part of its retail strategy for decades. The company hosts major annual events, including the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Santaland at Macy's Herald Square, Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks, and Macy's Flower Show. In 2025, JCPenney debuted the first-ever official iHeartRadio Jingle Ball 29-piece apparel collection in partnership with iHeartRadio's long-running holiday concert series. Target has also experimented with more experiential elements in its stores, including seasonally themed displays and decorations, seasonal products and collections, and promotional content across its social media channels. These examples reflect a broader effort among retailers to give shoppers new reasons to visit physical locations. Why retailers are investing in immersive experiences. Retailers' investment in immersive experiences comes as physical stores increasingly function as marketing platforms and experiential destinations alongside their traditional role as places to shop. Experiential retail is a strategy retailers are using to give consumers unique and memorable reasons to visit physical stores that complement what they can experience online. This is one reason brands continue to invest in flagship stores, which are typically larger than standard locations and may feature distinct architecture and design, exclusive merchandise, events, and hospitality experiences. Fernando Aguileta de la Garza, a communications, branding, and fashion culture expert with Elle Education Business, said flagship stores can enhance a brand's image while creating opportunities for direct communication with consumers. "An effective flagship store attracts new customers and keeps the current loyal ones hooked to the brand. The aim of a flagship store is to stimulate the emotional sensations and physical attributes that the brand possesses and showcase them to the customer." Despite ongoing store closures, brick-and-mortar retail remains a significant part of consumer spending. Physical retail accounted for approximately $14.4 trillion of the $18.9 trillion in total retail sales in 2025, according to Euromonitor research cited by EY. That helps explain why retailers such as Bloomingdale's are experimenting with ways to make physical stores destinations rather than simply places to complete a transaction. By combining shopping with hospitality, events, services, and other experiences, retailers are seeking new ways to make the in-store experience more distinctive for consumers. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published September 26, 2026 at 9:17 AM.

JCPenney keeps shrinking, closing its Pleasanton, California anchor store and five more locations in 2026. September 23, 2026 JCPenney has permanently shut its longtime anchor store at a major East Bay mall in California, part of a broader 2026 retreat that has trimmed the once-dominant chain to roughly 640 locations nationwide. The retailer closed its store at Stoneridge Shopping Center in Pleasanton, California, in February, ending a presence that dated to the 1980s. A JCPenney spokesperson told the Pleasanton Weekly that the company could not reach terms on its lease and had no alternative site in the market. The Pleasanton location is not an isolated loss. JCPenney has also closed stores at Seminole Towne Center in Sanford, Florida; Ford City Mall in Chicago; Rivergate Mall in Goodlettsville, Tennessee; Springfield Town Center in Springfield, Virginia; and Ross Park Mall outside Pittsburgh. Each closure follows the same pattern: expiring legacy mall leases and shifting foot traffic forced the company to walk away from locations it once anchored for decades. From 2,000 stores to 640, and still falling. At its peak in the 1970s, JCPenney operated more than 2,000 stores across the country. By the time the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020, that number had already dropped to 846, according to SEC filings. Simon Property Group acquired the chain that same year in a deal valued at $1.75 billion. Six years later, the footprint has contracted again, to roughly 640 locations. That means JCPenney has shed more than 200 stores since emerging from bankruptcy, a pace of closure that shows no sign of slowing. The financial picture matches the shrinking map. Net sales fell more than 8 percent year-over-year to $1.3 billion during the second quarter of 2026, Retail Dive reported. Neil Saunders, managing director at the market research firm GlobalData, put the decline in blunt terms. "The market, even just for department stores, grew during the quarter, so JCP's sales dip represents a serious loss of market share." That distinction matters. JCPenney is not simply caught in a sector-wide downturn. The broader department store market grew during the same period, which means the chain lost ground to competitors while the category itself expanded. Lease failures drove the Pleasanton and Pittsburgh closures. In its statement on the Pleasanton closure, JCPenney framed the decision as a lease negotiation that fell apart rather than a strategic pullback: "Regretfully, we are unable to continue our current lease terms for this store location and have been unable to find another suitable location in the market. We are grateful to our dedicated associates and the loyal customers who have shopped at our Pleasanton, CA, location through the years." The company used nearly identical language to explain the loss of its nearly 40-year-old Ross Park Mall store outside Pittsburgh, where lease talks also broke down. When a retailer cannot afford the rent at a suburban mall it has occupied for four decades, the math speaks for itself. Pleasanton sits in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, an area where commercial rents remain steep and foot traffic has shifted toward online shopping and newer retail formats. For a chain bleeding market share, holding a high-cost lease in a pricey California market was evidently unsustainable. A national pattern, not a regional blip. The six closures announced in 2026 span the country, California, Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. No single region accounts for the contraction. The common thread is aging mall locations with legacy leases that JCPenney can no longer justify. In Goodlettsville, Tennessee, the Rivergate Mall location joined the list. That closure fits a pattern seen at other JCPenney mall departures, where replacement tenants sometimes move quickly to fill the vacant anchor space with different concepts entirely. JCPenney is far from the only retailer retreating from physical storefronts. Across the industry, retail closures have surged to record levels, driven by the same combination of high rents, online competition, and changing consumer habits. But JCPenney's losses stand out because they come after a bankruptcy restructuring and a billion-dollar acquisition that were supposed to stabilize the brand. Simon Property Group, one of the largest mall operators in the country, bought JCPenney presumably to protect its own properties from losing anchor tenants. Yet the company Simon acquired continues to shed locations, including, in some cases, stores inside Simon-owned malls. The strategy of keeping a struggling department store alive to preserve mall traffic has not reversed the underlying decline. Long-tenured stores are the ones disappearing. What stands out about this round of closures is the age of the locations being cut. The Pleasanton store opened in the 1980s. The Ross Park Mall store operated for nearly 40 years. These are not experimental pop-ups or recent expansions that failed to find an audience. They are legacy anchor positions, the kind of stores that once defined a mall's identity and drew shoppers through the doors. Losing stores with that kind of tenure signals something deeper than a bad quarter. It suggests the economics of the traditional department-store-as-mall-anchor model no longer work for JCPenney at a growing number of locations. The chain has also closed long-standing stores in Fort Worth and departed malls in Maryland that themselves shut down entirely, a reminder that the decline cuts both ways, with weakening retailers and weakening malls dragging each other down. JCPenney has pointed to a new online marketplace as part of its path forward. But the company has offered few specifics about what that marketplace involves or how it will offset the revenue lost from hundreds of closed stores. Meanwhile, the closures keep coming. A company that once blanketed the country with more than 2,000 stores now operates fewer than a third of that number, and every quarter seems to bring another round of goodbye sales. At some point, restructuring stops being a turnaround and starts being a slow liquidation with better branding.