The economy is the final nail in their coffin, but didn't cause their problems. It only made it worse. I've been watching traffic at stores drop for the last 10 years. Why? Nothing to differentiate themselves from other retailers. Used to be all the overstocks and weird stuff brought you in. Regional foodstuffs. Oddball decorations. Maybe this week they'd have CDs, next week they'd have office supplies. You had to go there every week to see what was new. They stocked those cheap tools from Harbor Freight until HF saturated every market. They didn't compete with other retailers because they were their own category. They even closed out DeLorean back in the day. Ollies has picked up their stead, but that store can be kind of meh because prices can be almost retail and consumables are probably close to (if not already) expired. But no one needs that much cheap furniture, and there's nothing else at the stores to bring you in. They could probably shrink back to a regional retailer, maybe go back to Odd Lots, but it may be too late.