Cal­i­for­nia Retail Chain Clos­ing All 370 Stores After ‘Per­sis­tent’ Infla­tion And Eco­nom­ic ‘Head­winds’

Cal­i­for­nia-based retail chain 99 Cents Only Stores will shut­ter all of its 371 stores in the com­ing months, cit­ing infla­tion­ary pres­sures and eco­nom­ic head­winds.
The store, which was found­ed in 1982, made the announce­ment on Thurs­day that all of its stores across  Ari­zona, Cal­i­for­nia, Neva­da, and Texas would be closed down. Mike Simon­cic, the Inter­im Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of 99 Cents, pinned the blame for the clo­sures on a vari­ety of fac­tors, includ­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic and a strug­gling econ­o­my.
“This was an extreme­ly dif­fi­cult deci­sion and is not the out­come we expect­ed or hoped to achieve,” Simon­cic said. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the last sev­er­al years have pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant and last­ing chal­lenges in the retail envi­ron­ment, includ­ing the unprece­dent­ed impact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, shift­ing con­sumer demand, ris­ing lev­els of shrink, per­sis­tent infla …