Are the locals winning?

Interesting discussion on KTVZ about the relatively recent loss of national and regional chains here in Bend.  Quizno's, Papa Johns, Outback, Sears, Rays, etc. etc.

First of all, I'm not sure this isn't a normal rate of business turnover.  Some places work and some places don't -- and I think that holds true for national chains as much as it does for local businesses.

Some comments about how the locals must be doing better, but local stores go out of business at a much faster pace than national chains, they just don't get noticed as much.   (And the percentage of failures by chains seems to me to be miniscule.)

I mean, I've been surprised that we have as many major chains as we do, and that they seem to just keep on going.  I think many of them were lured here during the boom years, and I'm betting some of them are wondering why the hell they opened in such an isolated backwater.  I mean, when you wander through an empty Kmart or Sears, you wonder how they manage to keep going and going.  (Not that Kmart or Sears were new -- but the older stores are the canary in the coal mine.)

So the big chains come to town, even when the town probably can't support them, but they go on for year after year once they're here.

Until they don't.

Also interesting to me, is I didn't particularly didn't like Quezno's and Papa Johns and the Outback.  Bad experiences at all three.  So they may just have been badly run locally.

Another comment was wondering how they could have made it through the Great Recession and then collapse when the economy is getting better.

First of all, is the economy really getting significantly better?

Secondly, it probably was the Great Recession that killed them.

It's as if you had a major illness and you're just getting back on your feet and a minor bug comes along and finishes you off.


Meanwhile, there is a local business that I see is moving again.  This is at least the third time in the last year or so.

I don't understand this.  This is one of the worst things you can do, in my opinion.  I think that sometimes people open stores and they don't get the results they expected and so they think the grass is greener somewhere else.

But I think every reboot just resets the clock and makes it all that much harder the next time.  (Not to mention being disruptive and costly and stressful.)

I think you figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your location, adapt your business, and hang in there until enough people find you.  (Assuming that you're in the middle range of suitable locations.  If you picked a really bad location, I can see how you would want to move -- but moving three times in a year means you don't have the location, location, location knack...)