U.S. Retail Industry Weekly Numbers Soar: 573 Store Openings Are Eclipsed by GM’s 2,639 Store Closings and 130,000 Retail Job Cuts Made to Avoid Chapter 11

U.S. retail industry numbers soared last week, but not in a positive turnaround kind of way. Although the 2009 store opening list grew larger, store opening announcements were buried in a landslide of headlines about General Motors’ decision to terminate 1,100 dealership agreements, which will result in the closing of 2,639 retail outlets and the loss of at least 130,000 jobs.

In its effort to avoid Chrylser’s Chapter 11 fate, GM dealt the single largest blow to U.S. retailing, after the industry has already gone a few rounds and taken quite a beating in the recession ring . The only smidge of good in GM’s downsizing plan is that all the retail auto store closings and job cuts won’t be completed until fall of 2010. At least all those car salespeople won’t be immediately flooding into the jobless market en masse. The people who are already in the unemployment ranks would have been trampled hard by that hungry herd of go-getters.

By the way, GM officials have made it clear that consumers probably won’t be treated to any fire sale automobile liquidation prices as their dealership ranks are slowly thinned out. But at least the deal-making process shouldn’t be as difficult for buyers at the soon-to-be-shuttered GM dealerships. Many car shoppers will enjoy having the haggling upper hand for a change.

Besides the big news from GM, there was a smattering of store closings announced by other retailers. For example, the Thomasville Home Furnishings store closed its doors for the last time in Bakersfield, CA last Friday. A single store closing is not exactly a blogworthy event these days. This particular store closing earned attention, however, when it closed its doors without notice, leaving customers with paid furniture orders unfilled.

There’s no indication how many Thomasville customers this affects, but no matter what the number, this is big news from the company that just made a big splashy announcement about its “Thomasville Promise” a few short weeks ago. Mimicking some creative car manufacturers, the North Carolina furniture manufacturer and retailer concocted a “promise” to make your payments for you if you are laid off within a year of making a furniture purchase with your Thomasville credit card.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the Thomasville Promise about cash deposits paid to a franchise store that has permanently locked its doors before delivering your Ernest Hemingway living room ensemble. This is one of those moments of truth when a retailer will unmistakably reveal its true character. There’s no official word or hint from Thomasville yet as to what that true character will look like for the company, which is in a hard-hit industry in the midst of retail recession.

Hopefully the Thomasville executives will realize that their response will permanently impact their reputation and the credibility of their Promise program which vows “to offer security in the face of what many consider the worst that can happen.” Losing your job is really bad. But customers in Bakersfield who are without both their cash and their furniture, they are already living through what they consider to be the worst that can happen. It will be interesting to see just how committed Thomasville really is to its customers’ peace of mind.

Commitments to open new stores in 2009 continued at a steady pace last week, although there are whispers that those opening numbers may be scaled back in June or July depending on what is happening to the economy in general. Undoubtedly GM’s big news last caused more than one CFO to open those spreadsheet files already.