The Macy's Retail Competitor That's Been On The Decline For Years

As it gets its financial house to adapt to new hybrid shopping patterns, the iconic Macy's department store chain has been steadily closing locations. Called A Bold New Chapter, the strategy entails selling off 150 underperforming locations while improving the remaining 350 stores and enhancing its online shopping capabilities.

But Macy's is hardly alone. Retail chains all over the country are shuttering locations as they try to find ways to save money; many well-known shopping mall retailers have vanished already. Indeed, UBS reported in 2024 (via Retail Dive) that as many as 45,000 stores across the U.S. will close as retailers shift more toward fulfillment and distribution centers.

Case-in-point: Dillard's, a popular department store chain that some middle-class shoppers treat as a status symbol. The Little Rock, Arkansas-based department store that's well stocked with name-brand clothing and accessories has more than 270 locations across the U.S. Yet not even Dillard's is immune to the store-closing trend. Dillard's permanently closed five huge department stores between 2023 and 2025.

Dillard's stores that closed in 2023 were in Santa Rosa Mall in Mary Esther, Florida (115,000-square-feet), Metrocenter Mall in Phoenix, Arizona (90,000-square-feet), and Conestoga Mall in Grand Island, Nebraska (80,000-square-feet), according to the department store's 2024 Annual Report to investors. The following year, Dillard's shut down its 120,000-square-foot location in the Eastwood Mall Clearance Center in Niles, Ohio. Dillard's also closed a 145,000-square-foot store in the Stones River Town Center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where 75 people were employed, sometime in January 2025.

Those stores were closed during a time when Dillard's was facing declining sales. In its 2023 Annual Report, the chain reported that sales fell 5% in fiscal year 2023 compared to the previous year. In fiscal year 2024, store sales dropped by another 3%, per the 2024 Annual Report. However, Dillard's fortunes may have started to change. In a November 2025 press release, the retail company reported that store sales went up 3% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2025.

But that won't save Dillard's department store in Plano, Texas. Per the U.S. Sun, Dillard's is expected to shutter its location at The Shops at Willow Bend in early 2026. Part of the reason is that Plano mall is slated for redevelopment into a single-family community with offices and a hotel, WFAA reported. The upcoming change is due in part to the mall shedding tenants, including the imminent closure of anchor tenant Macy's and the shutdown of The Shops' Neiman Marcus by 2027.