How Do the Forum Shops Stay in Business with So Few Customers?

Whenever I walked through the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace past all of the high-end stores, I rarely saw anyone in them. Ever. How many sales per day or per week do they have to make to justify remaining open?

This is a case where looks can be, and definitely are, deceiving.

According to the last figures we've seen, for 2018 (and we searched high and low for 2019 numbers, to no avail), the Forum Shops boasted the second highest sales per square foot of any mall in the U.S. at $1,616. Put another way, if your 2,000-square-foot house cost as much as the Forum Shops earns per square foot, it would be worth $3.23 million. Very nice house.

Furthermore, we suspect that the Forum Shops took over the number-one-mall ranking in terms of square-foot sales, at least until the shutdown earlier this year. In 2018, the number-one mall was Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in Central Valley, New York (50 miles upstate from Manhattan), whose sales were $1,624, only $8 higher than the Forum Shops. With Vegas booming as it was up to mid-March, the Forum Shops probably topped the list in 2019. Actually, with the sales at all malls presumably down in the past nearly six months, it might still.

By comparison, the Fashion Show Mall's sales per square foot were $975 in 2018.

Maybe you weren't walking through the Forum Shops at the busy times of day or week. Or maybe you walked through recently, post-shutdown, when admittedly stores are a lot less crowded than pre-pandemic.

But another consideration might be that the average price of products at the Forum Shops is probably 10 times higher than at your everyday mall around the country, so one customer at Caesars is essentially the equivalent of 10 anywhere else.

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Reno Faoro Sep-12-2020

charlie hustle

is PETE still in the mall signing his book (s) ,doing  personal  autographs ,etc?

Sandra Ritter Sep-12-2020

Thanks for Asking This Question

I've often thought this about all of the high end shops in all of the casinos, who would spend that kind of money ever, much less here. Not being much of a shopper, if I won big the last thing I'd do is spend it on an expensive piece of clothing or jewelry. To each their own.

Dave Sep-12-2020

Museum

Several years ago, I walked into a high end handbag shop in a casino. There was nothing for less than $5K. One of the clerks is friendly enough to answer my questions. I said “no offense, but this stuff is rather gaudy to me. Who buys it? How do you stay in business?”

She admitted that she thought it was gaudy too, and that most of the visitors treat the place more like a museum than a store. But have just one person that just hit a jackpot come in here every so often, or some guy with a lot of money to burn who is looking to get extra special sex by buying his bimbo an expensive gift, and we stay in business.

Hobbs Sep-12-2020

Wealth

We are not all in this together. As of Q3 2019, the bottom 50% of households had $1.67 trillion, or 1.6% of the net worth, versus $74.5 trillion, or 70% for the top 10%. From an international perspective, the difference in US median and mean wealth per adult is over 600% I am sure it has only become more lopsided since the pandemic. Point being, there are a LOT of people out there with literally more money than they know what to do with. Enter the Forum Shops.

Question of the Day - 12 September 2020

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