Very few people think about the tailor or their dry cleaner as their favorite store, but move to a town lacking in either and you have an immediate problem.
Unless you can teach yourself tailoring, the options for making sure your pants or dress fit without a tailor are basically duct tape and safety pins. Neither of those actually does the job, so if your community lacks those service providers, it’s a real problem.
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The same applies with dry cleaning. You may not need it often, but when you need it, you really need it. Having to travel for a service that requires you to come back and pick up an item (or items) makes it doubly inconvenient when your community does not offer that particular service.
Some businesses just blend into the background until you have a specific need. Picture framing comes to mind. That might only come up once every few years, but if you need a picture framed and you don’t live near a framing store, you have to travel to one, which creates the same double travel problem as a distant tailor or dry cleaner.
There are all sorts of chains that provide highly needed services that don’t come up that often for many people. One such chain has decided to close nearly 200 locations, and that’s going to make life harder for many of its customers.
UPS Stores have been a key return location for Amazon packages.
Image source: Getty Images.
UPS winds down Amazon business
United Parcel Service (UPS) has slowly been winding down its long-standing relationship with Amazon. CEO Carole Tome talked about that during her company’s first-quarter earnings call.
“You’ll recall that we reached agreement with Amazon to reduce their volume in our network by more than 50% by June of 2026. Note that the volume we are transitioning out is Amazon’s fulfillment center outbound volume. This volume is not profitable for us, nor a healthy fit for our network,” she shared.
UPS isn’t exiting its partnership with Amazon, but it is being strategic in what business it accepts from the retail giant.
“The Amazon volume we plan to keep is profitable and it is healthy volume. In other words, volume where we can add value like returns and seller fulfilled outbound volume,” she added.
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These changes have allowed the company to reconfigure major parts of its business.
“With this reconfiguration, we will also lessen our dependency on labor, reduce the capital requirements needed to run the network, and will drive structural operating margin and return on invested capital improvements. While this may be the largest network reconfiguration in our history, we’ve got experience that gives us confidence that we will be able to complete our plans with very little customer disruption and at the right cost to serve,” Tome shared.
UPS Stores closing locations
People are a major expense for UPS, and Tome has been aggressive in keeping those costs in line with revenue.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve demonstrated our ability to manage hours and labor in line with changes in volume, all while staying within the confines of our labor agreement. In 2024, we successfully closed 11 buildings, and the learnings from those closings became the blueprint for our network reconfiguration approach,” she shared.
Now, the company plans to close a lot of UPS stores.
“We are moving very quickly. In this first phase, we will complete 164 operational closures, including 73 building closures by the end of June. And there’s more to come,” she added.
Having fewer locations will be less convenient for consumers, but the company remains confident it won’t compromise service.
“While our building footprint is changing, our pickup and delivery footprint is not. We remain committed to providing industry-leading reliability to all customers across the country. We’ll just do it with fewer buildings,” Tome said.
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She believes customers and small business users will convert to other locations.
“UPS will still be accessible and convenient for customer drop-offs and pickups due to our network of 5,300 UPS stores and 29,000 Drop Boxes and UPS Access Points. Ninety percent of the U.S. population lives within 5 miles of these locations, and about two-thirds of them are open on Sundays for added convenience,” she added.
UPS stores have serve as convenient drop-off locations for Amazon returns as customers can make the return without printing a label.
