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Your Money: What may have driven Sam’s Club to close Moline store

“The challenge for retailers is that increasing consumer shift from the traditional brick and mortar stores to e-commerce…”
sams club

The closing of Sam's Club in Moline may be part of a bigger trend nationwide.

Mark Grywacheski, Investment Adviser with the Quad Cities Investment Group, joins us every Monday on Good Morning Quad Cities for our "Your Money" segment.

On Monday, January 15th, he gave us his analysis of why so many Sam's Club store are closing. There are plans to close 63 stores, which is about 10% of Walmart's Sam's Club stores. Those closures are expected to impact around 10,000 employees, including 150 at the Moline location. There are not any stores closing in Iowa and Illinois was the hardest hit with seven stores closing across the state - the one in Moline and then six others in the Chicagoland area.

Grywacheski said this could be part of a larger problem for the retail industry:

"The challenge for retailers is that increasing consumer shift from the traditional brick and mortar stores to e-commerce," he explained. "In fact, 12 of the store closings will be converted to e-commerce distribution centers, but in the December jobs report the retail sector did lose 20,000 jobs despite a better than expected retail holiday shopping season."

For all of 2017, Grywacheski said the retail sector lost nearly 70,000 jobs. That's compared to a 400,000 job gain in manufacturing and construction.

"So you can certainly see that shift and that divide between the various sectors of the economy," he added. "In the upcoming weeks and months, what the financial markets will be looking for is confirmation of that better than expected numbers that everybody was talking about in December, especially that 61-day holiday shopping season."

We also talked to Grywacheski about the big takeaways from the December jobs report, the impact on the U.S. economy and the local economy. To see that part of our conversation, click here.

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