The Death of Party City
Party City is the latest large retailer to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection— which means they either re-organize or they go out of business. I have many years of retail experience but none of it involving party planning. In fact, one of my more controversial decisions in management was to hire a full time party planner who would organize weekly events for the store I managed in Webster— which at the time was the largest store in the chain at 60k square feet but third in sales. After a few weeks of having events which would include local bands playing on the roof on Saturdays and Hot Dog Carts setup outside we moved into the number one spot in sales.
Because the one thing I know about retail is keep it interesting— keep it fresh. Stale is death.
Coincidently the one and only time I’ve been in a Party City was either 2024 or 2023— my wife went it to pick up something and I went with her. She loves stores like this, when her mother was running a dance studio they would often go to Paperworld to get things for various events.
I wasn’t all that impressed.
First I found the lighting unpleasant— almost like the time I accidently walked into Sephora and you could perform surgery in the aisle because they use those awful LED lights. In my memory the lights at Party City flickered while I walked around tired looking aisles of hula dancers, tiki mugs, pirate suits, superhero things (I bought a Captain America mask for a friends young son) and a whole aisle of black OVER THE HILL paired with what looked like all pink flamingos and Barbie type marketing.
The store was empty, of both shoppers and employees and when we made our way up to the register the woman seemed surprised to see us.
The store overall was clean and neat— it wasn’t a mess like Ocean State Joblot or Ollies, but it offered no surprises or any kind of feeling of “party” as far as I could see. It seemed sad, like a New Years Eve Party at a nursing home being held at 430 in the afternoon by a bunch of people in various forms of awareness in wheelchairs with streamers (I have some experience with this).
So it is I’m not surprised that Party City will soon be among the tombstones of fallen retailers including Big D, Bradlees, Zayre’s, Caldor and Circuit City. If I worked at Best Buy I’d probably be typing my resume.
Evolve or die, that is one of the laws of retail.
