Reyers Goes to the Mall
After more than 135 years in freestanding and strip locations— including one billed as the “world’s largest shoe store”—Reyers has relocated to a mall, of all places. Here’s why. By Greg Dutter
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HE NEWS THAT Reyers has moved out of Pennsylvania after well over a century doing business along the western edge of the Keystone state (first in Pittsburgh and, since 1956, in Sharon) is big enough. The fact that it chose to set up shop in the Eastwood Mall in nearby Niles, OH, (Cleveland Browns country, no less!) is bigger. The fact that brothers Mark and Steven Jubelirer, president and vice president of the third-generation-owned operation, chose a mall is huge news. For starters, malls haven’t exactly been the end-all, be-all location for several years—and that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. They’ve been written off by plenty of pundits in the Amazon Age as white elephants, mausoleums, ghost towns…you get the picture. Beyond that, the Jubelirers, like their father and grandfather before them, have been longtime, mall oppositionists. Reyers survived two World Wars, 9/11, the Financial Crisis and a host of outside pressures—all without being in a mall. They stood firm against big box, discounters, online dealers and all comers (including malls) without leaving their freestanding and strip locations. In fact, it was their anti-mall stance that brought Reyers to prominence. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, the then 36,000-square-foot shoe mecca drew
900 busloads of shoppers annually—customers of all ages from as far away as Toronto, Cincinnati and the Carolinas made a pilgrimage to shop Reyers’ awe-inspiring inventory of 100,000 pairs. The Jubelirers took the “bigger is better” concept to unprecedented heights. Reyers was its own anchor, topped off by topnotch service and a massive selection in sizes and widths from women’s 4 to 14 and men’s 6 to 22 and from super slim to 6E. The hard-to-fit masses, in particular, saw Reyers as their only shoe salvation, providing the store a substantial and reliable return customer base season after season—no mall needed. So why did Reyers reduce its footprint by more than 25,000 square feet, beginning with its soft opening last month, and move to a mall of all places? What changed? In a word: traffic. Specifically, a lack thereof in its previous location, says Mark Jubelirer. While Sharon, PA, is a relatively short, half-hour drive from Reyers’ new digs, Jubelirer says it’s a world away in terms of traffic. Sharon is a depressed steel mill town. Or, as a quick Google search revealed: “Sharon was once a good place to be from; now it’s not a good town to go back to.” There simply aren’t enough people who live there or pass through regularly to support a large store format like Reyers’, according to Jubelirer. “During the last couple of decades our small-town business district had seen diminishing traffic,” Jubelirer explains. The bus trips dried up after other nearby draws closed. “Besides, the bus clientele now go to casinos and shop online. Car traffic from Buffalo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh also fell
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