#retail

Posts mentioning hashtag #retail

Below are all the posts — topics as well as replies — that mention the hashtag #retail.

Mention #retail in your post to continue the discussion!

Portland, Powell's Books Cuts

Powell's Books Ends Layoffs After 20% Workforce Reduction

Powell’s Books announced the completion of its final round of layoffs. This concludes a year-long process aimed at cutting operating costs. The company reduced its workforce by about 20 percent. These layoffs impacted employees at all levels, including the leadership team. Powell's will now focus on performance, service, and consistency.

https://www.kptv.com/2026/01/27/powells-books-completes-final-round-layoffs/

#Oregon #Portland #Layoffs #BookPublishing #Retail

LI AUTO

LI AUTO-W Dismisses Mass Closures, Missed Sales Target

http://www.aastocks.com/en/stocks/news/aafn-con/NOW.1498610/popular-news/AAFN

LI AUTO-W denied online rumors regarding massive store closures and layoffs. The company clarified it plans to close a small number of low-efficiency retail stores. This initiative does not involve widespread closures. By December last year, LI AUTO operated 548 retail centers across 159 cities. Its 2025 delivery volume of 406,000 vehicles missed the annual sales target.

#Rumor #Closure #Retail

Be magenta!

Does anyone even buy anything on Be Magenta!? Like what’s the point? For one, everything is expensive, also, why would I want to buy any T-Mobile related merch and get lay off the next day. What? Use my $80 T-Mobile hoody as a pijama and make myself feel worse by looking at the logo of the company who didn’t care about me?

#Layoffs #Morale #Retail #Price #Culture

Macy’s moves forward with major workforce cuts

The department store chain Macy’s says it will close a fulfillment and distribution center in Connecticut and lay off more than 1,000 workers. Recent filings with the Connecticut Department of Labor show that the company plans to shut down locations in South Windsor and Cheshire, with 1,050 employees impacted overall.

https://www.newsweek.com/macys-makes-mass-layoff-announcement-11398780

#Connecticut #DepartmentClosure #Retail #WorkforceReduction

How are the G-B Stores doing?

Have the stores been getting non stop deliveries of pallets of merchandise to sell off along with its currently own goods? Positions starting to open up at nearby locations to help colleagues who want to stay with the company? I know fixture sales will probably start beginning in Febuary. Hope everyone is doing OK. Closing a location can be fun.

#Closure #Company #Layoffs #Merger #Retail

Converse closing a dozen or so stores

I’ve been told that Converse retail is in a huge downward spiral. A dozen or so stores are being closed in the coming months and the stores that remain open barely have any product on their shelves. The person I know believes even the profitable stores are being closed when the leases are up. Anyone know anything else from the Converse-side of things?

#Closure #Company #Layoffs #Retail #Rumor

Budgets

I know the budgets for the store teams came out, but have the budgets for the management team came out? Or any changes in jobs for managers/captains. Any layoffs or role changes being talked about?

#Budget #Retail #Staffing

Jobs in New Jersey: Recent Layoffs and what could be Ahead

Construction, tech, and some retail and hospitality jobs were down from last year.
Tech and corporate services weakened nationwide, and New Jersey wasn’t immune, with hiring freezes and staff cuts becoming more common.Retail and logistics bounced around as shoppers changed habits and supply-chain costs ate into margins.

https://nj1015.com/new-jersey-job-market-update/

#HiringFreeze #Logistics #NewJersey #Retail

GameStop closing hundreds of stores

GameStop is closing hundreds of U.S. stores in early 2026 as part of a cost-cutting strategy to pivot from physical retail to digital and collectibles amid declining sales. CEO Ryan Cohen's $35 billion incentive fuels criticism, with employees facing abrupt layoffs. This reflects broader gaming industry shifts toward online dominance.

https://www.webpronews.com/gamestop-to-close-hundreds-of-us-stores-in-2026-digital-shift/

#Layoffs #Retail #News #Location #Closing

Blowing Money

Isn’t it hilarious? They cut hours at the stores while launching these shiny new markets, just slapping lipstick on a pig with mismatched fixtures from the clearance aisle. Meanwhile, they’re pouring millions into those fancy light-up signs for the golden stores. When will they realize that all the flashy visuals in the world won’t help if there’s no one around to assist the customers? People have already started to stop showing up—do they really think those big lighted boxes will bring them back in?

#CostCutting #Retail #BadLeadership

Cut until you can’t cut anymore 2026

Support and merchandising job re-alignment starting soon. You heard it here first. Hours will be a mix of early morning, late night, closing, opening, and mid shifts based on business needs
H.R./asset protection positions in bronze stores and under are toast
Hometown stores will be run by key holders and leads, salary positions (except for store manager) are toast

#HR #JobSecurity #Realignment #Retail #WorkforceReduction

WWD.com Store Closing List

https://wwd.com/business-news/retail/macys-14-stores-closing-2026-1238442180/
Macy’s Discloses 14 Stores Closing This Year
The stores are part of the previously disclosed plan to close about 150 department stores, leaving 350 that will continue to operate.

By
DAVID MOIN
Plus Icon

JANUARY 8, 2026, 5:59PM

Macy’s Inc., continuing to execute on its three-year “Bold New Chapter” reinvigoration strategy, disclosed 14 Macy’s locations that will be closed this year.
“In executing our strategy, we continue to review our portfolio and make careful decisions about where and how we invest, including closing underproductive stores and streamlining operations,” Tony Spring, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, wrote to employees in a memo, a copy of which was obtained by WWD.

“These decisions are not made lightly,” Spring wrote. “We communicated directly with affected colleagues first and are providing support, including transfer opportunities where available, as well as severance and outplacement resources where applicable. We thank all those colleagues for their dedication and service to the company.”

The 14 locations are part of the previously announced plan to close approximately 150 Macy’s department stores, leaving 350 remaining. In 2025, 66 stores were closed.

The strategy also calls for investing in 125 “Reimagine” stores, which are receiving increased staffing in high-traffic areas such as women’s shoes and the fitting room areas, fresher products and improved visuals. Last quarter, the 125 stores achieved comparable sales growth of 2.7 percent. They continue to outperform the overall Macy’s department store chain.

“These targeted changes allow us to focus where it will have the greatest impact — reimagining our best stores, enhancing customer service, expanding our luxury business, and advancing our supply chain capabilities,” Spring said.

“Nearly two years into our Bold New Chapter strategy, the focus of our work remains the same: strengthen our stores, simplify how we operate, and invest in the experiences that matter most to our customers. Today, that work is centered on disciplined execution and continuous improvement, with strategic investments that are guided by what customers value most.”

Spring also indicated that Macy’s net promoter scores are improving, that Bloomingdale’s delivered 9 percent comp sales growth during the third quarter, Bluemercury delivered its 19th consecutive quarter of comp sales growth and the supply chain is being modernized.

The 14 stores being closed are:

Fox Run – Newington, N.H.
Livingston – Livingston, N.J.
Marley Station – Glen Burnie, Md.
Boulevard – Amherst, N.Y.
Crossroads Center – St. Cloud, Minn.
Rivertown Crossings – Grandville, Mich.
West Valley Mall – Tracy, Calif.
Pittsburgh Mills – Tarentum, Pa.
La Palmera – Corpus Christi, Tex.
Northlake Mall – Atlanta
Triangle Town Center – Raleigh, N.C.
Grossmont – La Mesa, Calif.
Interstate – Ramsey, N.J.
Budget House – Tukwila, Wash.

#Retail #Layoffs #Severance

Richard Baker is retail poison!

source: https://therobinreport.com/saks-global-another-trainwreck/

01.07.26: The Robin Report: Saks Global: Another Trainwreck by Mark Cohen

Saks Global is Richard Baker’s next and maybe his final retail failure. Lord & Taylor, The Hudson Bay Company in all its various iterations in Canada and Europe, and now the monstrosity he recently created by putting Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off Fifth, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman together, teeters on bankruptcy. This recent disaster is the result of the company’s failure to make a required $100 million interest payment to lenders at year’s end.

Baker, as a real estate manipulator, gets high marks. As a retail leader and retail strategist, however, he has been an abject failure.

Baker Shadow Play

Baker suddenly appeared on the retail scene in 2006 when his real estate company, NRDC, bought Lord & Taylor from the newly branded Federated/Macy’s Corporation, which inherited L&T when it acquired May Company stores. Then, in 2008, Baker acquired control of The Hudson Bay Company following the untimely death of its majority shareholder. Three years later, in 2011, Baker’s HBC sold its Zeller’s stores in Canada to Target Corporation for $1.8 billion. Kudos to Baker, as most of the Zeller’s store locations were arguably worthless as hapless Target would soon find out.

When I was Director of Retail Studies at the Columbia Business School, I attended a student-led Retail and Luxury Goods Conference in 2012, keynoted by Baker. He gave a rambling off the cuff 40-minute presentation in which he regaled the 250 students and guests in the audience about how great it was to be rich; how he did little work at Wharton having surrounded himself with “good looking babes” eager to do his work; and how he had just “stolen” Lord & Taylor from Federated for $1.2 billion. Narcissism aside, he was likely correct in his view that Federated could not wait to unload L&T as an outlying May Company property. He went on to talk about how easy it was to master the art of merchandising based on his exposure to L&T’s business. Completely put off by this performance, I was unfortunately seated in a location that precluded me from leaving early.

Next in 2013, Baker acquired Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off Fifth stores in what might be described as another triumph of price over value. Saks’ management had failed to fully recognize the leverage it could have used on its own behalf based on its Fifth Avenue store’s real estate valuation. Baker, as a real estate manipulator, gets high marks. As a retail leader and retail strategist, however, he has been an abject failure. His stewardship of Lord & Taylor was pathetic.

In an effort to cut expenses, he attempted to rationalize back-of-the-house activities between Canada-based Bay stores and American-based L&T stores, which may have made sense to some clueless consultant but never worked in retail reality. He then came up with a scheme to downsize the L&T Fifth Avenue flagship and sold the building to that other paragon of business strategy, WeWork, eventually ki-ling the L&T brand.

Baker and The Bay

The disruption and ultimate liquidation of The Bay’s principal competitor in apparel, accessories and soft home, Sears Canada, should have resulted in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but The Bay failed to capitalize on it.

Moving Saks Fifth Avenue stores into The Bay stores spaces in Canada and introducing Saks Off Fifth in Canada was another failed initiative. In fact, moving Saks Fifth Avenue into a cavernous “low-brow” Bay location on Queen Street adjacent to the Eaton Center in Toronto was an incredible misstep in and of itself. The physical space was available, but the luxury customer certainly wasn’t there.

Opening over a dozen Bay department stores in the Netherlands in 2017 was another bone-headed move. Baker did a complex deal with Germany-based Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, securing retail space in the Netherlands, but again the customer just wasn’t there. Allegedly, Baker believed that since the Canadian Army liberated the Netherlands from the Na-is at the end of WWII, the Dutch would welcome a Canadian company with open arms. It didn’t happen. The Dutch Bay stores were all closed by 2019. The customers who might have remembered being liberated in 1945 were either dead or too old to patronize a Canadian-owned department store. Baker claimed he made money on this ridiculous foray, and he may very well have, but the Dutch paid a terrible price for this catastrophe.

Baker Business Model

In 2024, Baker set his sights on acquiring Sak’s principal competitor, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman. The timing wasn’t great. There was the disappearance of luxury competitor Barney’s, and the Saks business at best treaded water. Also, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman was struggling to put a challenging Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceeding behind it.

There was also the monetization of hbc.com and saks.com, which raised a considerable amount of money from a group of hapless investors. These investors did not realize how completely counterproductive this strategy would prove to be.

Along the way, Richard Baker has presided over a never-ending list of lead executives, many of whom barely lasted two years with the company. There was Tina Johnson, Jeff Sherman, Bonnie Brooks, Jerry Storch, and Helena Foulkes, among others. And then there was Marc Metrick, whose 30-year tenure with Saks has just come to an abrupt end. But maybe it was 30 years too long. Metrick was a planning executive at Saks who, in recent years, masqueraded as its lead merchant.

Debt Economics

The history of two weak and/or weakened retail companies merging and finding success is simply this: There is no history. Add to that the non-starter of two companies that essentially do business with the same customer and in many cases in the same geographic locations. But these hurdles didn’t stop Baker from consummating a debt-laden merger of two icons. And incomprehensibly, for well over a year, the company failed to pay many of Saks’ vendors either on time or in many cases at all. So, now both companies have just completed a poor 2025 in sales. And having been cut off from receiving fresh inventory by a cynical factor community, Saks Global just failed to make that $100 million year-end interest payment.

Baker in Bankruptcy

Maybe Baker will come up with a bundle of new cash. If business remains as poor as it has been, any new cash infusion would only be a stopgap measure. Alternatively, the company might come up with a prepackaged restructuring agreement with its creditors. Or it will surrender to a voluntary or involuntary bankruptcy proceeding.

I’m not a bankruptcy attorney, but having lived through Federated department store’s successful restructure, and an up close and personal experience with Bradlees stores eventual failed emergence from bankruptcy, I think the bell may soon toll for Saks Global.

If it files for Chapter 11 financial relief, creditors organize and line up based upon their preexisting credit agreements (or lack thereof). Secured creditors, typically the company’s lenders, rely on collateral rights while unsecured creditors, typically vendors and service providers, hope for some eventual relief through the bankruptcy process. All payables from the company, whether current or past due, are frozen.

In a bankruptcy, legal and financial restructuring professionals line up for a typically substantial fee opportunity. A new lender or a consortium of lenders emerges to provide Debtor in Possession funding to enable the company to stay upright while in bankruptcy. All vendors are asked to resume shipping based on the newly created surety of DIP financing.

But, lacking confidence that past due receivables will eventually be paid, many vendors resort to selling their company receivables to distressed debt (or vulture) investors for substantial discounted values. This, in my opinion, is a terrible flaw in the bankruptcy process in that unsecured vendors, who you would expect to have a stake in the company’s eventual successful emergence from bankruptcy, have now traded places with investors seeking a fast financial return.

Saks Global at Risk

If Sak’s Global were operating as a stable platform with a successful sales and margin track record, with capable senior leadership, a reliable operating strategy, and good relationships with its vendors and customers, there would be ample reason for the company to navigate through bankruptcy and emerge with new debt and a newly restructured balance sheet. But none of this appears to be the case. As 2026 unfolds to what will undoubtedly be a challenging year for all retailers, the prospects for Saks Global are truly grim. My sense is that many vendors long ago stopped shipping or have curtailed their support for Saks, Neiman Marcus and maybe even Bergdorf Goodman, and they are unlikely to get back on board after having been egregiously abused these past few years.

Many will find another retailer to serve their customers if they haven’t already done so or continue to build a direct-to-consumer model of their own. Why wouldn’t they? Who needs the sturm und drang of a failing retail partner who doesn’t pay its bills? If that happens, Saks Global is toast.

#Retail #Bankruptcy #Leadership #Debt #ChapterEleven

Richard Baker is retail poison!

source: https://therobinreport.com/saks-global-another-trainwreck/

01.07.26: The Robin Report: Saks Global: Another Trainwreck by Mark Cohen

Saks Global is Richard Baker’s next and maybe his final retail failure. Lord & Taylor, The Hudson Bay Company in all its various iterations in Canada and Europe, and now the monstrosity he recently created by putting Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off Fifth, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman together, teeters on bankruptcy. This recent disaster is the result of the company’s failure to make a required $100 million interest payment to lenders at year’s end.

Baker, as a real estate manipulator, gets high marks. As a retail leader and retail strategist, however, he has been an abject failure.

Baker Shadow Play

Baker suddenly appeared on the retail scene in 2006 when his real estate company, NRDC, bought Lord & Taylor from the newly branded Federated/Macy’s Corporation, which inherited L&T when it acquired May Company stores. Then, in 2008, Baker acquired control of The Hudson Bay Company following the untimely death of its majority shareholder. Three years later, in 2011, Baker’s HBC sold its Zeller’s stores in Canada to Target Corporation for $1.8 billion. Kudos to Baker, as most of the Zeller’s store locations were arguably worthless as hapless Target would soon find out.

When I was Director of Retail Studies at the Columbia Business School, I attended a student-led Retail and Luxury Goods Conference in 2012, keynoted by Baker. He gave a rambling off the cuff 40-minute presentation in which he regaled the 250 students and guests in the audience about how great it was to be rich; how he did little work at Wharton having surrounded himself with “good looking babes” eager to do his work; and how he had just “stolen” Lord & Taylor from Federated for $1.2 billion. Narcissism aside, he was likely correct in his view that Federated could not wait to unload L&T as an outlying May Company property. He went on to talk about how easy it was to master the art of merchandising based on his exposure to L&T’s business. Completely put off by this performance, I was unfortunately seated in a location that precluded me from leaving early.

Next in 2013, Baker acquired Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off Fifth stores in what might be described as another triumph of price over value. Saks’ management had failed to fully recognize the leverage it could have used on its own behalf based on its Fifth Avenue store’s real estate valuation. Baker, as a real estate manipulator, gets high marks. As a retail leader and retail strategist, however, he has been an abject failure. His stewardship of Lord & Taylor was pathetic.

In an effort to cut expenses, he attempted to rationalize back-of-the-house activities between Canada-based Bay stores and American-based L&T stores, which may have made sense to some clueless consultant but never worked in retail reality. He then came up with a scheme to downsize the L&T Fifth Avenue flagship and sold the building to that other paragon of business strategy, WeWork, eventually ki-ling the L&T brand.

Baker and The Bay

The disruption and ultimate liquidation of The Bay’s principal competitor in apparel, accessories and soft home, Sears Canada, should have resulted in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but The Bay failed to capitalize on it.

Moving Saks Fifth Avenue stores into The Bay stores spaces in Canada and introducing Saks Off Fifth in Canada was another failed initiative. In fact, moving Saks Fifth Avenue into a cavernous “low-brow” Bay location on Queen Street adjacent to the Eaton Center in Toronto was an incredible misstep in and of itself. The physical space was available, but the luxury customer certainly wasn’t there.

Opening over a dozen Bay department stores in the Netherlands in 2017 was another bone-headed move. Baker did a complex deal with Germany-based Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, securing retail space in the Netherlands, but again the customer just wasn’t there. Allegedly, Baker believed that since the Canadian Army liberated the Netherlands from the Na-is at the end of WWII, the Dutch would welcome a Canadian company with open arms. It didn’t happen. The Dutch Bay stores were all closed by 2019. The customers who might have remembered being liberated in 1945 were either dead or too old to patronize a Canadian-owned department store. Baker claimed he made money on this ridiculous foray, and he may very well have, but the Dutch paid a terrible price for this catastrophe.

Baker Business Model

In 2024, Baker set his sights on acquiring Sak’s principal competitor, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman. The timing wasn’t great. There was the disappearance of luxury competitor Barney’s, and the Saks business at best treaded water. Also, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman was struggling to put a challenging Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceeding behind it.

There was also the monetization of hbc.com and saks.com, which raised a considerable amount of money from a group of hapless investors. These investors did not realize how completely counterproductive this strategy would prove to be.

Along the way, Richard Baker has presided over a never-ending list of lead executives, many of whom barely lasted two years with the company. There was Tina Johnson, Jeff Sherman, Bonnie Brooks, Jerry Storch, and Helena Foulkes, among others. And then there was Marc Metrick, whose 30-year tenure with Saks has just come to an abrupt end. But maybe it was 30 years too long. Metrick was a planning executive at Saks who, in recent years, masqueraded as its lead merchant.

Debt Economics

The history of two weak and/or weakened retail companies merging and finding success is simply this: There is no history. Add to that the non-starter of two companies that essentially do business with the same customer and in many cases in the same geographic locations. But these hurdles didn’t stop Baker from consummating a debt-laden merger of two icons. And incomprehensibly, for well over a year, the company failed to pay many of Saks’ vendors either on time or in many cases at all. So, now both companies have just completed a poor 2025 in sales. And having been cut off from receiving fresh inventory by a cynical factor community, Saks Global just failed to make that $100 million year-end interest payment.

Baker in Bankruptcy

Maybe Baker will come up with a bundle of new cash. If business remains as poor as it has been, any new cash infusion would only be a stopgap measure. Alternatively, the company might come up with a prepackaged restructuring agreement with its creditors. Or it will surrender to a voluntary or involuntary bankruptcy proceeding.

I’m not a bankruptcy attorney, but having lived through Federated department store’s successful restructure, and an up close and personal experience with Bradlees stores eventual failed emergence from bankruptcy, I think the bell may soon toll for Saks Global.

If it files for Chapter 11 financial relief, creditors organize and line up based upon their preexisting credit agreements (or lack thereof). Secured creditors, typically the company’s lenders, rely on collateral rights while unsecured creditors, typically vendors and service providers, hope for some eventual relief through the bankruptcy process. All payables from the company, whether current or past due, are frozen.

In a bankruptcy, legal and financial restructuring professionals line up for a typically substantial fee opportunity. A new lender or a consortium of lenders emerges to provide Debtor in Possession funding to enable the company to stay upright while in bankruptcy. All vendors are asked to resume shipping based on the newly created surety of DIP financing.

But, lacking confidence that past due receivables will eventually be paid, many vendors resort to selling their company receivables to distressed debt (or vulture) investors for substantial discounted values. This, in my opinion, is a terrible flaw in the bankruptcy process in that unsecured vendors, who you would expect to have a stake in the company’s eventual successful emergence from bankruptcy, have now traded places with investors seeking a fast financial return.

Saks Global at Risk

If Sak’s Global were operating as a stable platform with a successful sales and margin track record, with capable senior leadership, a reliable operating strategy, and good relationships with its vendors and customers, there would be ample reason for the company to navigate through bankruptcy and emerge with new debt and a newly restructured balance sheet. But none of this appears to be the case. As 2026 unfolds to what will undoubtedly be a challenging year for all retailers, the prospects for Saks Global are truly grim. My sense is that many vendors long ago stopped shipping or have curtailed their support for Saks, Neiman Marcus and maybe even Bergdorf Goodman, and they are unlikely to get back on board after having been egregiously abused these past few years.

Many will find another retailer to serve their customers if they haven’t already done so or continue to build a direct-to-consumer model of their own. Why wouldn’t they? Who needs the sturm und drang of a failing retail partner who doesn’t pay its bills? If that happens, Saks Global is toast.

#Retail #Bankruptcy #Leadership #Debt #ChapterEleven

If business has been doing well, that still doesn't mean there won't be cuts

There's no limit to greed. We get the short end of the stick whether the business is booming or busting. Don't ever relax, especially in retail. Better to always be on the lookout for other options. You never know - you may come across a better opportunity. Yes, even in this bad economy. There's life after Macy's.

#Layoffs #Retail #CostCutting #LookingOutside

A high-performing store

My store is high-performing, do we have anything to worry about? I remember reading a while ago somebody complained about being blindsided with closing since the location was high-performing, but I thought the person was trolling. Does it ever happen that such a store is closed for whatever reason?

#Closure #Concern #Culture #Layoffs #Retail

Jumping The Titanic

Chanel RTW, bags and shoes are pulling out of seven locations, mostly in California. Once the fires flare up, everything is affected. Sales associates are scared of losing job/liquidation/store closing, and they are being left with nothing to sell. Many other brands are expected to follow Chanel and pull out as well. I also heard that a few vendors are threatening to pull out completely from Saks and Neiman Marcus.

Good luck, y’all—get your best résumé ready!

#JobSearch #JobSecurity #Layoffs #Liquidation #Retail

New in store Starbucks

Seems like a lot of new in store Starbucks have been popping up (non kiosk). Is the goal to roll this out to most of the renovation stores that don't currently have a Starbucks in their mall? The Starbucks in my mall left during the pandemic so this would be very good for Macy's foot traffic

#Retail #CustomerExperience #Growth