Elgin resident Melissa Young was among the shoppers who flocked to the Big Lots store in Elgin this week hoping for a bargain or two after hearing the Randall Road business will be closing.
Young regularly shopped at Big Lots because she found a lot of items on sale, and she’ll miss it when it’s gone, she said.
“It’s always been less expensive than grocery stores,” Young said. “It’s a good place to buy a lot of things.”
No closing date has been announced but the 204 S. Randall Road store is one of more than 300 slated to shutter as the company grapples with huge profit losses in the first part of the year. As of right now, items are being discounted at up to 20%.
“We don’t have any information on (when it will close),” said a store manager, who declined to provide their name.
Big Lots lost $205 million in the first quarter of the year, company officials reported in a June news release. Its net sales were $1 billion, down 10.2% from the same time last year. In the first quarter of 2023, the company had a net loss of $98.7 million, according to the release.
The discount retailer announced in June that some of its 1,389 stores would close that month, but the list expanded this week with an additional 289 closures.
Nine Illinois stores are on the list, including locations in Elgin, Burbank, Calumet City, Centralia, Crest Hill, Fairview Heights, Lockport, Niles and Oakbrook Terrace.
“While we made substantial progress on improving our business operations in Q1, we missed our sales goals due largely to a continued pullback in consumer spending by our core customers, particularly in high-ticket discretionary items,” Big Lots President and CEO Bruce Thorn said in the release.
The company remains healthy, Thorn said, but there are a significant number of underperforming stores that Big Lots is working to address as it transforms the business.
The retailer sells furniture, mattresses, groceries, seasonal items like Christmas trees and decorations, summer furniture and “everyday essentials” at discounted prices.
A former employee, who declined to give her name, was among the shoppers this week taking advantage of the additional price cuts. She worked at the store for a few months during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, and wasn’t surprised to hear it was closing.
She came out to check out the prices but would be waiting for deeper discounts before buying anything, she said.
Big Lots opened in the Otter Creek Shopping Center in November 2012. Another location in Carpentersville previously closed.
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
