Retail’s struggle began before the pandemic
The retail industry was in the midst of a transformation before 2020. But the onset of the pandemic accelerated that change, fundamentally reordering how and where people shop, and rippling across the broader economy.
Many stores closed for good, as chains cut physical locations or filed for bankruptcy, displacing everyone from highly paid executives to hourly workers. Amazon grew even more powerful and unavoidable as millions of people bought goods online during lockdowns. The divide between essential businesses allowed to stay open and nonessential ones forced to close drove shoppers to big-box chains like Walmart, Target and Dick’s and worsened struggling department stores’ woes. The apparel industry and a slew of malls were battered as millions of Americans stayed home and a litany of dress-up events, from proms to weddings, were canceled or postponed.
This year’s civil unrest and its thorny issues for American society also hit retailers. Businesses closed because of protests over George Floyd’s killing by a white police officer, and they reckoned with their own failings when it came to race. The challenges faced by working parents, including the cost and availability of basic child care during the pandemic, were keenly felt by women working at stores from CVS to Bloomingdale’s. And there were questions about the treatment of workers, as retailers and their backers treated employees shoddily during bankruptcies or failed to offer hazard pay or adequate notifications about workplace COVID-19 outbreaks.
Many Americans felt the effects of the retail upheaval — the industry is the second-biggest private employment sector in the United States — and some shared their experiences this year with the New York Times.
‘That’s what I did’
Joyce Bonaime, 63, of Cabazon, Calif., has worked in retailing since the 1970s. In the past 14 months, she became one of many store employees whose lives were upended by bankruptcies — first at Barneys New York and more recently at Brooks Brothers.
Bonaime had spent about 10 years as a full-time stock coordinator for a Barneys outlet at Desert Hills Premium Outlets near her home, overseeing the shipping and receiving of designer wares, when the retailer filed for bankruptcy and liquidated late last year.
“Barneys treated people very badly at the end there,” Bonaime said. The retailer, she said, sent inconsistent messages about severance payments and the timing of store closures that limited people from finding other jobs just before the holiday shopping season.
After Barneys, Bonaime secured a full-time stockroom position at Brooks Brothers in the same outlet
mall. But the pandemic forced the store to temporarily close in March, and she was furloughed. She anticipated returning once the store reopened this summer. But Bonaime’s job was terminated this month and she lost her health benefits. She is now collecting unemployment checks for the first time in her life.
Bonaime had planned to work a few more years before retiring, but her options are limited. Businesses at the outlet mall are struggling — and it was already hard to interview last year as a woman in her 60s, she said. Amazon is hiring, but she is concerned about the risk of accidents in a warehouse.
“This pandemic just changes everything because I would have no problem getting a job otherwise,” she said. “I just don’t think there’s going to be anything in retail, and that’s what I did my whole life.”
‘Collateral damage’
Soon after the pandemic hit, Nordstrom said it would permanently close its three high-end Jeffrey boutiques, which were founded by Jeffrey Kalinsky and acquired by the retailer in 2005. Kalinsky, a Nordstrom executive who had focused on bringing designer apparel to the retailer, retired as part of the move.
The Jeffrey stores, in
New York, Atlanta and Palo Alto, Calif., had dressed the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and even been lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” The first location, in Atlanta, would have celebrated its 30th anniversary in August.
Kalinsky, 58, said in an interview that he was recovering from COVID-19 at the end of March when he became aware that the stores might remain shut after a temporary closure.
“It felt like I had a gun pointed at me,” he said. “The folks I always dealt with at Nordstrom were always very transparent, and I can only surmise that they were looking at how to position themselves to get through this period — and I was collateral damage.”
He had once told the Jeffrey staff that it was like the original cast in a Broadway musical, performing at an “amazing level” for customers every day. The hardest part of this year was telling employees about the closing, he said.
Kalinsky hopes to find a job designing for an American brand, saying he is not prepared to retire from retailing. He wonders if Jeffrey could have survived the pandemic by working with vendors and landlords.
“We had an impressive business, a wonderful clientele, and we would have been fine — but did we have a piggy bank for COVID? No,” he said.
‘What might be coming’
In June, as the first wave of the coronavirus was finally coming under control in New York City, Feisal Ahmed got a call from his manager at Macy’s.
Would he like to return to his job selling luxury watches when the store in Herald Square reopened? “I am already there,” he told his boss. “Put me first in line.”
But after an initial feeling of relief and excitement to return to work after four months of lockdowns, reality set in for Ahmed. He has gone some days without selling a single watch, for which he would earn a commission.
Last week, business picked up for a few days, driven by last-minute Christmas shopping, but it was nowhere near a normal holiday pace.
Still, Ahmed feels lucky. In New York City, retail jobs make up 9 percent of private-sector employment, and many have been slow to return. At stores selling clothing and accessories, employment is down more than 40 percent from a year ago, according to a recent report by the state comptroller’s office.
Ahmed said that as a member of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, he had certain job protections. But he worries about what the winter will bring, as the pandemic continues to keep many shoppers away.