Store closures get the headlines, but a meaningful part of retail is opening doors this year, not closing them, and building omnichannel in from the start rather than retrofitting it later.
Deloitte's 2026 Global Retail Outlook found that 96 percent of retail executives surveyed expect industry revenue to grow this year, and 81 percent expect margin expansion on top of it. That confidence is showing up in real estate decisions. Cavender's Western Wear grew from 9 new stores in 2024 to a planned 27 in 2026, tripling its pace of expansion in two years. Burlington, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Boot Barn are all opening new locations this year as well. Industry-wide, analysts project roughly 3,689 new store openings in 2026, running alongside the closures that tend to dominate the retail news cycle. Growth and consolidation are happening at the same time, often inside the same company.
What is different this time is what "opening a store" actually means. A decade ago, expansion was a real estate and merchandising exercise, get the lease, stock the shelves, staff the floor. In 2026, a new store that cannot support buy-online-pickup-in-store or ship-from-store on day one is already behind the customer expectations it is opening into.
The upside of getting this right is substantial. Research on store expansion has found that opening a new physical location can lift web traffic in that market by roughly 37 percent, as the store itself becomes a discovery and trust signal for the brand's online presence. Separately, roughly three-quarters of BOPIS customers make an additional purchase while they are in the store picking up an online order, turning a fulfillment interaction into incremental revenue. A new store that opens without real-time inventory visibility or a working pickup process is leaving both of those gains on the table in its very first weeks, which is an expensive way to learn a lesson that could have been designed around from the start.
This is also why 85.9 percent of top retail chains now offer at least one omnichannel fulfillment option, and why Digital Commerce 360 found that 34.6 percent of shoppers expect to make more store pickups in 2026 than they did the year before. Omnichannel is no longer a feature a growing retailer adds after a new store proves itself. It is part of the store's opening-day spec.
The chains expanding fastest right now are staffing new store openings differently than they would have five years ago. A Site Operations Manager is getting involved earlier, making sure a new location's inventory is visible online before the doors open rather than weeks after. An Omnichannel Fulfillment Manager is setting routing logic for the new node before its first order ever comes in, instead of retrofitting rules once a fulfillment problem shows up. And retailers testing small-format, pickup-oriented locations, the kind Sprouts Farmers Market and BJ's Wholesale Club have both piloted, are hiring store leaders built for a fulfillment-first footprint rather than a scaled-down version of a traditional big-box team.
| Store Expansion, Then | Store Expansion, Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-opening priority | Lease, build-out, merchandising plan | Lease, build-out, merchandising plan, plus inventory and fulfillment integration |
| When omnichannel gets addressed | After the store proves itself | Before the store opens, as part of the launch plan |
| Store leader profile | Sales floor management experience | Sales floor management plus fulfillment and inventory fluency |
| Format experimentation | Mostly full-size, full-assortment locations | Small-format, pickup-oriented hub stores alongside traditional locations |
The common thread among chains expanding well this year is that the omnichannel hire happens on the same timeline as the real estate decision, not after it. A Site Operations Manager or Omnichannel Fulfillment Manager who is only looped in once a new location is already open is starting from behind, cleaning up inventory visibility gaps and fulfillment routing that should have been built into the store's launch plan from the beginning. The retailers seeing the strongest results from new stores are the ones who treat the omnichannel build-out as part of the opening, not a phase two project.
If your company is opening new locations this year, the strongest move is bringing your Site Operations and Fulfillment leadership into the launch plan alongside real estate and merchandising, not after the ribbon-cutting.
If expansion is on your roadmap for the back half of 2026, the timing question matters as much as the role itself. Loop in the people who will own inventory visibility and fulfillment routing while the store is still being built out, not once it is live and the gaps are already showing up as missed pickups or invisible inventory. If you are testing a smaller or pickup-oriented format for the first time, screen store leadership candidates specifically for comfort running a fulfillment-first operation, since that is a genuinely different job than managing a traditional full-assortment location.
We place both of these profiles regularly for retailers in active growth mode, from the Site Operations and Omnichannel Fulfillment leaders who make a new store's first ninety days smooth, to the store-level talent who can run a hub format well from opening day. If your footprint is growing this year, that is exactly the kind of search worth starting early.
Chains including Burlington, Abercrombie & Fitch, Boot Barn, and Cavender's Western Wear are all in active expansion mode this year. Cavender's alone grew from 9 new stores in 2024 to a planned 27 in 2026. Industry-wide, analysts project roughly 3,689 new store openings in 2026 alongside the closures making headlines, which means growth and consolidation are both happening at the same time, often within the same company.
The biggest shift is building omnichannel readiness into a new store's launch rather than adding it after the fact. That means Site Operations Managers and Omnichannel Fulfillment Managers need to be involved before a store opens, not brought in months later to fix inventory visibility or fulfillment routing that was never designed for the store to begin with.
New physical stores drive measurable digital lift, with research showing a new brick-and-mortar opening can boost web traffic in that market by roughly 37 percent, and BOPIS customers who pick up in store frequently make an additional purchase while they are there. A new location that opens without real-time inventory visibility or a working pickup process leaves that lift on the table from week one.
Yes. Small-format and hub-style stores, the kind Sprouts Farmers Market and BJ's Wholesale Club have been testing, are built around fast pickup and returns rather than a full assortment, which means the staffing model leans more heavily toward fulfillment execution and less toward a large sales floor team. Retailers opening these formats need store leaders comfortable running a compact, fulfillment-first operation, not a scaled-down version of a traditional store.