Up to 25,000 stores could close during the course of 2020 thanks to rapid disruption in the retail industry, according to Coresight Research. As much as 60 percent of those closures would take place in shopping malls, which would beat the previous record (set last year) of 9,300 closures last year. Earlier this year, the company guessed there would be just 15,000 stores shutting for good, but has since come to think more radically. The bloodletting has already been serious, with famous brands like J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and J.Crew alread giving up the fight. Coresight reports 4,005 closures by retailers so far in 2020. “We expect that a return to pre-crisis levels in offline discretionary retail sales overall will be gradual, as we expect consumer confidence, demand and spending to be short of normal for some time,” Coresight founder and CEO Deborah Weinswig
