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      Appelt’s Jewellery has decided to vacate its Portage retail outlet because of the mall’s loss of Wal-Mart and Safeway, two anchors stores which had proven to draw traffic that supports smaller retailers.
“Unfortunately, due to a ‘shift’ in retail traffic, we have had to make the difficult decision to close our doors in the Portage Mall,” Bert Appelt, president of Appelt’s Jewellery, said in a written statement yesterday, adding it “is a direct result of the closing of two anchors.”
“It hurts the flow of traffic,” said Appelt during a phone interview yesterday. “The mall has also had its problems over the last number of years.”
The number of vacancies among the smaller retail spaces also concerned Appelt.
“That doesn’t help,” he said.
The closure of the business means all employees at the outlet will lose their jobs, according to store manager Suzanne Parker.
“Its upsetting,” she said. “It is a little hard to handle.”
“The hardest thing in the world is to close down a store and to tell the staff that we don’t have a job for them …, but sometimes we don’t have a choice,” Appelt said.
The company president said the store is not moving because of plans for other Appelt’s Jewellery stores in different areas. He said the Portage store would stay if the mall had the traffic to support it.
“The closing of this store has nothing to do with any store openings we are planning for the future,” Appelt said.
The company has three stores in Winnipeg, as well as retail spaces in Steinbach and Morden, where the first Appelt’s opened in 1938 by Bert Appelt’s grandfather, Ben Appelt.
Appelt’s decision to close its local store comes as a disappointment to the president of Portage and District Chamber of Commerce, Anita Janzen-Gemmel. “It’s sad to see a business go that’s been in Portage so long.”
Appelt’s opened its Portage location in 1988 and has been a member of the local chamber for 18 years.
“It may inconvenience some of the area’s residents in terms of fine jewelry,” Janzen-Gemmel said. “They kind of had a niche in the market.”

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