Ohio Residents Losing Their Tops

Tired of being beaten by the competition, supermarket chain Tops Markets LLC announced it's closing six Northeast Ohio stores with a resulting loss of about 400 jobs. Two stores will be closed in Cleveland and one each in the communities of Kent, Madison, Ravenna, and Akron. Employees were notified Wednesday with some to be offered reassignment or early retirement.

Frankly, Tops shutting down stores comes as no surprise. The company recently cut the business hours of all its NE Ohio stores to minimize costs. This action alone was tell-tale of significant financial stress because if a store isn't open for business, it won't make money. Yet, they cut the hours anyway.

There's been little discussion about product pricing at Tops and there should be. The company's primary problem is the failure to keep prices generally comparable to those of the competition. From my experience, across the board Tops charges anywhere from 20 to 100 percent more than its competition for identical products. Customers have a tendency to notice such differences.

So, Tops managers, take note. Unless you do something to become competitive on prices, prepare to close more stores. Of course, not everyone agrees with my assessment and customer 'excitement' is blamed. In fact, company spokeswoman Stefanie Zakowicz even stated, "No matter what we did to excite our customers, they told us it wasn't enough." Well, you can forget about exciting the customers for now because they aren't showing up.