Portland, Oregon’s last two Walmarts closing as companies see shoplifting surges
Julia Johnson
The last two Walmart stores in Portland, Oregon, are closing their doors as companies across the board experience surges in retail theft.
The stores will both close on March 24. Walmart says it’s because the stores are not meeting expectations financially.
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“This decision was not made lightly and was reached only after a thorough review process. We have nearly 5,000 stores across the U.S., and unfortunately, some do not meet our financial expectations. While our underlying business is strong, these specific stores haven’t performed as well as we hoped,” a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
“There is no single cause for why a store closes and our decision is based on several factors, including historic and current financial performance, and is in line with the threshold that guides our strategy to close underperforming locations,” the statement continued.
In December, President and CEO of Walmart Inc. Doug McMillon said that “theft is an issue. It is higher than what it has historically been.”
He also revealed that “if that is not corrected, over time, prices will be higher and/or stores will close.”
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McMillon evidently wasn’t bluffing as Portland prepares to be without the retailer.
“It is really city by city, location by location, its store managers working with local law enforcement,” he said of how the company deals with theft and other crime.
As for what he wanted to see from lawmakers, he said at the time, “it’s just policy, consistency, and clarity.”
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In 2022, the National Retail Federation revealed that retail shrink led to $94.5 billion in losses for companies. The 2022 National Retail Security Survey also found that retailers overwhelmingly pointed to increases in violence, shoplifting, organized retail crime, and employee theft due to the pandemic as reasons for heightened risk for their companies.
“The factors contributing to retail shrink have multiplied in recent years, and ORC is a burgeoning threat within the retail industry,” NRF Vice President for Research Development and Industry Analysis Mark Mathews said at the time. “These highly sophisticated criminal rings jeopardize employee and customer safety and disrupt store operations. Retailers are bolstering security efforts to counteract these increasingly dangerous and aggressive criminal activities.”