I have a new piece in Discourse Magazine, on the evolution of outlet shopping as a specific segment of retail. I’ve written a fair bit about Liberty Village, the outlet center in my hometown which is recognized as the first outlet mall in America, and is now awaiting total redevelopment. The related reading links include those pieces. I use Liberty Village as an example in the piece, but it’s not about any particular place. The piece is about how the standard thing we call an outlet center or outlet mall has evolved over time. Specifically, how it has evolved to be a bigger and more standard, predictable, and replicable shopping experience.

First, I want to show you these (sorry, very blurry) photos I took last Black Friday, in 2023. This is the exit to go to the Leesburg Premium Outlets, a modern outlet center typical of the segment today, managed by the real-estate company Simon. (Simon says…)

What you’re seeing here is not just the exit all backed up. There are cars parked all over the grass off the exit ramp. Meaning the very large parking lot for the outlets themselves was very much full. Here’s the satellite view of the property, with the exit ramp at the top left:

So it’s interesting; while lots of parking lots no longer fill up even on holidays—see this project from Strong Towns—these big modern outlet centers more than fill up easily. They capture the same sort of excitement that the older, quainter, outlet centers of the 1980s and ‘90s used to capture.

And those older centers have been closing or becoming semi-abandoned in recent years. I list a bunch in the article, and go on to make the more abstract point that you’re seeing different iterations or “generations” of the concept over time, and you can see this for other types of businesses too:

There are certain businesses where you can distinctly observe the “generations,” as we refer to iterations of electronic hardware. You can see it with supermarkets, ranging from early ~10,000 square foot neighborhood grocery stores to later midcentury 20,000-30,000 square foot supermarkets to modern giant supermarkets with gourmet offerings and massive prepared food sections. You can see it with all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets: There are a few old-school establishments out there, with a single steam table and Jello and chocolate pudding in big trays for dessert, but no grill or sushi. Then there are the newer ones with maybe four tables and a small sushi bar and hibachi station.

But the latest buffets tend to have as many as eight steam tables and very large “sushi bars” (consisting mostly of combinations and permutations of crabstick and avocado). You can also see certain “concepts” simply disappear. The salad bar/steakhouse format—the Sizzlers and Ponderosas—are nearly gone; the more upmarket but fundamentally similar Brazilian steakhouse chains like Fogo de Chão are growing (from one location in 1997 to 65 by 2024). As an overall retail segment develops, the previous iterations tend to fall by the wayside.

It’s always interesting—almost spooky—to observe a live business from a previous generation that’s still there, but isn’t being opened anymore in that form, and won’t exist anymore once it closes. It’s almost like seeing the last member of a species, already effectively extinct even in life.

The other thing the piece is about is whether this shift is about corporate profits or consumer preferences. And I think you probably have to say it’s some mix of both, as are most of these things. Simon says, but so does the consumer. For example, one of the ways modern outlet shopping is more predictable and scalable is that there are now outlet versions of most of these stores, rather than actual factory or outlet stores selling the “real” merchandise but outdated or with small defects or what have you. There’s less of a random treasure-hunt element and more of a transactional, here are discount-grade branded items in a place called an outlet center, and it’s a fun place to spend half a day element. And while that’s a convenient business model, it’s also probably inevitable; there aren’t enough of the real returns/overstocks/factory seconds/etc. to stock the same basic Premium Outlets everywhere with the same basic merchandise and shopping experience.

The quaint, village-style shopping centers that have survived are not the old, smaller versions of the modern outlets. They’re ones that are unique in some way and have their own draw. A prime example is Peddler’s Village, which is built a lot like Liberty Village was, but is full of independent, local stores:

One example of something very much like a first-generation outlet mall is instructive. Peddler’s Village, a quaint, walkable, outdoor shopping complex with historic-looking buildings and an on-site flagship restaurant and inn, has been a major commercial attraction in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for decades and remains so today. It’s basically at the same scale as Liberty Village, but it’s filled mostly with independent, locally owned shops, and the mix of businesses leans heavily in the direction of tasting rooms, specialty foods and decor/knickknack/houseware-type places. In other words, one-off shops you can’t find everywhere or replace with online shopping—places that reward physically visiting and browsing.

Right across from Peddler’s Village was an actual first-generation outlet center, Penn’s Purchase Factory Stores. Built in the 1990s, the property was deteriorating and mostly vacant by the mid-2010s. Part of the Penn’s Purchase property, on one side of the road, has been revived with a handful of tenants, similar to the mix in Peddler’s Village. But the larger piece of Penn’s Purchase on the other side of the road still sits mostly empty and falling apart.

While this piece started as a sort of nostalgia-tinged lament for the older iteration of outlet shopping, as I wrote it, it became more of a history with less lament, because this is probably just the way outlet shopping had to evolve given it’s popularity.

There’s more in the piece. Give it a read!

Related Reading:

Liberty Or Death

The End of America’s First Outlets

More on America’s First Outlet Mall

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