SPOKANE, Wash. — With the growth of online shopping, many local retail stores aren’t able to keep up with e-commerce company Amazon.
Payless, Shopko and KMART are the most recent stores that have announced their closings.
Payless Shoe Source announced Friday it will be closing all of its stores. A store representative at the Spokane Valley location said Saturday is the last day the store will accept coupons. A liquidation sale starts Sunday.
The stores start closing in March, and all of them are expected to be closed by May 2019.
ShopKo is closing a total of 49 of its locations, including the one on Spokane’s South Hill. The store is only accepting its $5 coupons but has store-wide sales of up to 30 to 70 percent off of merchandise.
The store is expected to close on March 2.
Sears, the company that owns KMART announced it is closing 80 of its stores nationwide.
The E Sprague KMART is the last KMART location in Spokane and is set to close on March 3. The store is no longer accepting coupons but does still accept points on store rewards cards.
The store has sales ranging from 30 to 60 percent discounts.
While there hasn’t been a direct correlation drawn between Amazon’s growth and these stores’ closings, as Amazon prepares to open its new warehouse in Spokane, these stores are packing up to leave.
According to a report from the company, Amazon made $3 billion in net income in just the fourth quarter of 2018.