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Fossil Group is trimming its mall footprint yet again, closing seven stores in the first three months of 2026 and warning investors it will shutter as many as 15 locations by year’s end — leaving the watchmaker with roughly 185 stores worldwide.
And it all comes as malls are no longer what they were.
The Richardson, Texas company disclosed the closures during its first quarter earnings call, part of a downsizing effort that has already wiped out more than 100 stores since 2024.
Fossil closed 54 locations in 2024 and another 49 in 2025, according to the company’s own figures.
Chief financial officer Randy Greben told investors the pullback is intentional as the company works through a broader turnaround plan.
The cuts land as Fossil posts a smaller loss than Wall Street expected, with a first quarter net loss of just $800,000, down sharply from $17.6 million a year earlier.
Fossil is far from alone. Boutique chain Francesca’s liquidated its entire fleet of roughly 400 stores after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February, its second trip through bankruptcy court in six years.
Claire’s also filed for Chapter 11 last year before being bought by a private equity firm that halted its liquidation. Even Saks Fifth Avenue emerged from its own bankruptcy with a smaller footprint intact.
But brokers who track the sector say the closures are less a sign of the American mall dying and more a sign of who gets to stay.
“This is not the old story of too many stores from the pre-e-commerce or COVID era,” Adelaide Polsinelli, vice chairman at Compass, told The Post.
“What we are seeing now is a sorting. The strong centers pull further ahead, the weak ones empty out. Class A malls run near full occupancy and only a few points below pre-pandemic traffic, while the bottom tier sits closer to 70% occupied and still sliding,” Polsinelli added. “The closures cluster in the weak locations. This is a location problem and a relevance problem, not a blanket collapse.”
The brands going dark tend to share a profile, Polsinelli said, built for an era of casual mall browsing that no longer draws the same crowds.
“The chains failing are the accessories and fast-fashion brands built for mall foot traffic, and they are not failing the same way,” she said. “The real estate is not dead. The tenant roster is turning over,” Polsinelli said.
“Good centers are swapping tired apparel for grocery, medical, fitness, food, and entertainment, uses that pull people in on a Tuesday, not just a Saturday. That is the reinvention, and landlords with capital are leaning into it.”
Locally, Polsinelli said, the vacated square footage isn’t going to another department store, and it isn’t always staying inside an enclosed mall at all.
Grocers have emerged as the most aggressive tenants moving into former big box space around New York.
“On Long Island, Uncle Giuseppe’s alone signed three deals, taking former Stop & Shop, King Kullen, and Babies R Us boxes in Greenvale, Levittown, and Bohemia. Whole Foods opened a 43,000-foot-store in a former King Kullen plaza in Holbrook and signed its first full-format Queens store in Ridgewood. Food Bazaar took 37,000 feet on a 25-year lease in Inwood,” Polsinelli said.
Gyms and wellness operators have become the second major force absorbing space, and they’re doing it with some of the largest leases in the city.
Not every property finds a soft landing, though. The weakest enclosed malls are being rethought entirely rather than simply re-tenanted, Polsinelli said, pointing to Staten Island’s Empire Outlets, which lost its Nordstrom Rack anchor and now sits under half-occupied.
“The third bucket is the hardest, the weak enclosed centers, and that is where you see reinvention rather than re-leasing,” she said. “Empire Outlets is the local example … the city is now studying a mixed-use future for the site rather than refilling it store by store. The pattern is clear. Necessity and experience uses, groceries, gyms, medical, food and entertainment, are absorbing the space apparel gave up. The boxes that cannot attract those uses get reprogrammed entirely.”
For Fossil and the accessories brands built for a bygone mall era, Polsinelli’s read is straightfoward: the real estate isn’t disappearing, it’s just no longer being built around them.
“It is trading racks of clothes for the things you cannot buy online, a workout, a doctor, a dinner, a massage or a gallon of milk,” she said.
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