Definitely hard to make a buck in retail these days,especially when your competition is BPS, Amazon, and any other monster online retailer. For sure,Gander was late to the Internet market and that more than anything likely sealed their fate.

 

As someone already noted, overhead for brick and mortar stores will kill you unless you are competing only against other b&m stores. Not even close.

 

Eventually there will be even fewer stores to walk into than there are now,with the bulk of the business going to the most tech savvy retailers out there. That's the price we all pay for demanding lower and lower prices. 

 

I've seen this pattern play out over the past 40 years with mom and pop music stores as well. Try to find a music store where you can walk in and buy a new $2500 Martin guitar and you'll look long and hard. Oh,they're out there, but fewer and farther between one another. When you're competing against online retailers who offer 40% off you don't have much of a chance,since your overhead won't permit you to offer such steep discounts.

 

It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out in the years to come.

 

The website says "Gift Cards accepted until 5/18".  Is that May 18 of this year?  Or is that May of 2018?

That means a week from now. Better use them up.

According to a worker there my location is starting at 15% off and working their way up to 90% off by closing time. I splurged and took advantage of these deals and got a lot of great items. Then went back yesterday and go the new shimano stradic and a nice #8 rod! I will probably be back there 100 more times as the sales go up.

19 hours ago, Buckeye Ron said:

Definitely hard to make a buck in retail these days,especially when your competition is BPS, Amazon, and any other monster online retailer. For sure,Gander was late to the Internet market and that more than anything likely sealed their fate.

 

As someone already noted, overhead for brick and mortar stores will kill you unless you are competing only against other b&m stores. Not even close.

 

Eventually there will be even fewer stores to walk into than there are now,with the bulk of the business going to the most tech savvy retailers out there. That's the price we all pay for demanding lower and lower prices. 

 

I've seen this pattern play out over the past 40 years with mom and pop music stores as well. Try to find a music store where you can walk in and buy a new $2500 Martin guitar and you'll look long and hard. Oh,they're out there, but fewer and farther between one another. When you're competing against online retailers who offer 40% off you don't have much of a chance,since your overhead won't permit you to offer such steep discounts.

 

It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out in the years to come.

 

 

True, it's happening to every type of business that sells goods. 

 

 

Some will survive, a lot will not. 

Ganders problem is they quit carrying everything.  There selection is horrible.  And musky baits really there are only a hand full of lakes with them and there are specialty shops for that.  I remember going into gm as a kid and the selection was huge now it's tailored more to the person who fished say maybe 4-6 times a year.  Why is it they can't carry high end gear but field and stream (dicks sporting goods) can

ok...the end is a few days away, and, the prices are still stupid.

 

pretty much wasted my time there last night.

 

(and, they don't understand why the went belly up?)

So I jusy got another email says keyword up to 40% off