Store Closure Watch logged 430 closure and distress events for the week of July 25–31, 2026 — 339 closures, 62 bankruptcies, 13 layoffs, and 9 restructurings, up 22.5% week-over-week. West Marine posted the week's largest chain total with 15 records across ten states, manufacturing ran roughly 44% above its trailing average led by Daimler Truck's 387-job Portland plant closure, and International Motors filed the week's largest workforce notice at 1,341 jobs in Springfield, Ohio.
By the numbers
The Big Story
West Marine posted the week's largest chain total: 15 records across ten states, from Martha's Vineyard to Santa Barbara. The entries are a mix of confirmed store closings and locations recorded under the company's bankruptcy case — the clearest picture yet of the boating retailer's coast-to-coast contraction, with clusters in Connecticut (Branford, Mystic, Norwalk) and Massachusetts joining single-store closings in Delaware, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Vermont.
The week's other defining pattern is industrial. Manufacturing ran 58 events against a trailing eight-week average of 40 — the widest gap of any sector — led by Daimler Truck's Portland, Oregon plant (387 jobs), Owens Corning's Walkerton, Indiana facility (130), Forest River's Plant 63 in Bristol, Indiana (105), and Pearson's Candy Company's St. Paul factory (80). Alongside them, International Motors filed the week's largest workforce notice of any kind: a WARN covering 1,341 jobs at its Springfield, Ohio truck operation.
Tractor Supply's rolling Petsense shutdown accelerated, with 15 store closings logged this week — five in South Carolina alone — bringing the program's footprint in the dataset to roughly two dozen locations against an announced plan of about 75 stores. (Stores appear in local coverage as both "Petsense" and "Petsense by Tractor Supply"; we track them as one program.) Total volume reached 430 events, up 22.5% from last week's 351.
Sector Breakdown
- Retail — 208 events. West Marine (15), Big Lots (6), Giant Food (6), Barnes & Noble, The Container Store, and The North Face among the recognizable names; the sector ran well above its recent average again.
- Restaurant & Food Service — 105 events. Wendy's (7, concentrated around Dayton, Ohio), MOD Pizza (6, mostly Northern Virginia), Beard Papa's (6), Maggiano's Little Italy (4), and TGI Fridays lead; above the sector's recent pace.
- Industrial / Manufacturing — 53 events. The Daimler, Owens Corning, Forest River, and Pearson's Candy closures headline a week that ran roughly 44% above the sector's trailing average.
- Corporate Bankruptcy — 13 events. New filings including Republic National Distributing Company, Rad Power Bikes, The Dolphin Company, and the fast-casual pizza operators Pieology and Fired Pie.
- Grocery & Convenience — 9 events. Safeway, 7-Eleven, and Amazon's Go/Fresh formats among them.
- Healthcare — 8 events. Including a 160-job layoff at Pottstown Hospital in Pennsylvania and a 761-job reduction announced across Wellstar Medical Group in Georgia.
Notable Individual Events
- International Motors — Springfield, Ohio. WARN filing covering 1,341 jobs at the truck maker's Springfield operation — the week's largest single workforce impact.
- Daimler Truck — Portland, Oregon. Confirmed manufacturing plant closure effective late October, 387 jobs — the largest job total tied to a confirmed closure this week.
- Smith Drug Company — Spartanburg, South Carolina. The pharmaceutical distributor confirmed a September 30 closure with a WARN filing covering 195 jobs.
- Owens Corning — Walkerton, Indiana. Confirmed facility closure effective October 29, 130 jobs per its WARN notice.
- Forest River Plant 63 — Bristol, Indiana. The RV maker confirmed a September plant closure affecting 105 jobs.
- Pearson's Candy Company — St. Paul, Minnesota. The confectioner's factory closure was confirmed for late September, with a WARN filing covering 80 jobs; Northern Iron, also in St. Paul, filed for 86 jobs the same week.
- Republic National Distributing Company — multiple states. The alcohol distributor entered the dataset with bankruptcy records in Georgia and Texas plus an announced Oregon-and-Washington wind-down covering roughly 400 jobs.
Methodology
Store Closure Watch records are AI-extracted from company announcements, WARN notices, court dockets, and news coverage, then audited with an independent verification pass and cross-referenced against state WARN filings before publication. Thirty-five of this week's records carry WARN filings. Every record carries a source link and confidence flag, and each weekly file contains only events newly identified that week — re-coverage of previously reported closures is deduplicated against our full history. Public roundups report chain names and city or metro areas only; street addresses, coordinates, and per-record source links are available to subscribers. Learn more about how the data pipeline works.
Figures reflect the dataset as of August 2, 2026, following weekly deduplication and quality review.