- Kohl`s plans to partner with retailers like grocery stores or convenience stores to lease space in its stores.
- The department store has made roughly 300 of its stores operationally smaller, leaving white space.
- Grocery and convenience stores can be strong traffic drivers.
Kohl`s plans to partner with retailers like grocery stores or convenience stores to lease the white space left by the roughly 300 stores it has "right-sized" over the past several years, CEO Kevin Mansell told CNBC at ICR`s conference this week.
The department store has created operationally smaller, more profitable stores within its roughly 87,000-square-foot boxes. That downsizing leaves unused footage, which Mansell said would benefit from traffic-generating retailers like those that sell food.
"If we had our preference, we are going first after well-capitalized companies, and preferably ones that have high traffic in grocery and convenience," Mansell said...