Are Kohl’s stores closing? CEO Michael Bender says: “Retail is not one where you can flick a switch and turn everything around overnight”
The department store retailer shuttered more than two dozen stores last year and is now focusing on its core market, “middle to low-income” customers.
Nearly a year has passed since Kohl’s department store shuttered 27 stores in 15 states by April 2025. Since then, its profits and cash flow have increased over numbers posted in 2024 despite reporting sales falling by 4 percent.
The outlook for sales in 2026 looks like it will be flat at best or even a slight decrease again. However, currently there are no stated plans for more store closures according to CEO Michael Bender. “I would not anticipate any sort of grand plan of saying we’re taking stores out or adding stores at this point,” he said during an earnings call earlier this month.
He told investors that the focus is on “optimizing what we already have” and making sure “to continue to push the stores productivity going forward” at the Wisconsin-based company’s 1,150 remaining locations, of which “well over 90% are profitable.”
While “no major change in the store base” is expected at this time, he did say that Kohl’s runs an annual evaluation of stores and if there is an opportunity for the retailer to relocate a store, “we can do that.”
“Retail is not one where you can flick a switch and turn everything around overnight”
Speaking to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Bender said that the company is listening to its core clientele, which are “middle to low-income” consumers, and paying attention to how they respond to changes the retailer is making.
He shared that customers have been telling the company “very loudly” that they want Kohl’s to “please curate an assortment that makes me know what my situation is right now, which is I’m trying to make sure that the dollars I have stretch as far as they can.”
Bender noted that their customers’ wallets are being hit ever harder since gas prices began to rise “the last couple weeks or so,” which coincided with the start of the U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran.
While the company has been making “progressive improvement,” Bender says that “retail is not one where you can flick a switch and turn everything around overnight.”
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