Gottschalks in Antioch, California, Closed Today, Sunday, June 28, 2009

Somersville Road Retail Store Latest Sad Casualty in Great Recession

Today, Sunday, June 28, was the last day in business for many Gottschalks stores all across the country. In Redding, the store on Hilltop Drive planned to stay open all day today until everything in the store was gone, according to Redding.com. Items were selling for at least 80 percent off at the store in Palm Springs, per The Desert Sun.

Inside the store in Antioch, the writer of this article, a local resident, witnessed a store almost completely bare, with just one small section of the store with the remaining bits of clothes for sale at dramtically reduced prices.

Shirts were purchased for four dollars, a nice sofa pillow for one dollar, and a stack of 20 gift boxes also for a dollar. It was sad to see a store reduced to basically giving away its items, but at least they were making money to pay the remaining employees who were on their last day of employment

Bankruptcy

Gottschalks went out of business and had to file bankruptcy, like other big chain stores like Mervyns and Circuit City, because it was unable to reinvent itself in a changing business landscape, according to the Sacramento Bee. They simply could not compete against deep-pocketed business corporations like Wal-Mart.

Gottschalks did not have the price leverage that much larger wide-scale companies have and could not "buy goods as cheaply as larger retail chains," according to an analysis by Newsminer.com.

The Future for Antioch

Gottschalks of Antioch is now closed. This follows the bankruptcy of and closing a few months ago of Mervyns of Antioch which was a nearby tenant in the same complex as Gottschalks. A few blocks north of this mall, on the other side of Highway 4, is the empty, hollow warehouse that previously housed Circuit City. Sadly, a few blocks west of this shuttered store is the now-closed Mazzei Pontiac Cadillac Buick GMC auto dealership in Pittsburg.