Tag: Shopping and Retail

Posted on by

Ministry of Supply Sold Office Apparel. It Has Had to Rethink Things.

Within weeks, the world changed, though the extent of the shift would not become clear for months. Mr. Advani recalled a sign posted in the brand’s stores in mid-March that said it would reopen on April 1. “It turned out that April of 2021 would have been ambitious,” he said.At the time, the company was not alone in believing that it simply needed to ride out a monthslong storm before normalcy returned. It put retail store staff to work on remote projects like sending gifts and handwritten notes to its best customers, and tapped the Paycheck Protection Program to pay …

Read More

Posted on by

Amazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond Alabama

Players from the National Football League were among the first to voice their support. Then came Stacey Abrams, the Democratic star who helped turn Georgia blue in the 2020 election. The actor Danny Glover traveled to Bessemer, Ala., for a news conference last week, where he invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s pro-union leanings in urging workers at Amazon’s warehouse there to organize. Tina Fey has weighed in, and so has Senator Bernie Sanders.Then on Sunday, President Biden issued a resounding declaration of solidarity with the workers now voting on whether to form a union at …

Read More

Posted on by

The Boredom Economy

Among the most vivid recent examples of boredom’s economic influence occurred late last month when amateur traders, many of them followers of the Reddit forum Wall Street Bets, piled into shares of GameStop, a down-for-the-count retailer for gamers. These investors pushed its stock to astronomical highs before it crashed back to earth.Part of their motivation was the idea that they could stick it to hedge funds, which had bet that GameStop would fall. Part of it was boredom.“Im bored i have 8k in free money what can i invest in that will make at least a little …

Read More

Posted on by

MyPillow C.E.O.’s Trump Conspiracy Theories Put Company on the Spot

For the past four years, most American corporations have tried to avoid the appearance of partisanship while also distancing themselves from the inflammatory rhetoric of former President Donald J. Trump and his supporters, walking a tightrope to keep customers and employees happy.It has been a different story for MyPillow. Mike Lindell, the company’s founder and chief executive, has remained one of Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters. His sustained peddling of debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud got him barred from Twitter on Monday night. With retailers like Kohl’s and other major companies cutting ties with the …

Read More

Posted on by

Retail Sales Drop in December for Third-Straight Month

Consumer spending fell for the third-consecutive month in December, confirming what many economists had predicted would be a disappointing holiday season for many retailers and restaurants.Retail sales fell 0.7 percent last month, the Commerce Department said on Friday, as the economic recovery showed signs of stalling and virus cases surged across the country, prompting shoppers to avoid stores amid a new wave of restrictions.For the second-straight month, the drop was worse than what most economists had predicted, showing that the deterioration of the broader economy in the final quarter of 2020 was deeper than expected.“In one line: grim,” is …

Read More

Posted on by

The Tech That Will Invade Our Lives in 2021

Here’s what that means. Let’s say your family owns smartphones, several computers and a game console. If all of them are being used to consume heavy amounts of data — to stream video, for example — Wi-Fi 6 does a better job at providing bandwidth to all the devices at the same time as opposed to letting one device hog most of it.Efficiency is especially important because more of our stuff connects to the internet, from watches to television sets to bathroom scales to thermostats. On average, the number of internet-connected devices owned per person is expected to climb to …

Read More

Posted on by

What Giant Skeletons and Puppy Shortages Told Us About the 2020 Economy

America has Zoom towns.Many middle-class millennials who lingered on the housing market’s sidelines for years reported that the pandemic had hastened their buying plans. They have been lured by the Fed’s pandemic-tied interest rate cuts, which have made mortgages cheap, and by the prospect of more space.Business & EconomyUpdated Dec. 23, 2020, 8:59 a.m. ETSome millennials, freed from office buildings by remote work arrangements, seem to be aiming for cities where single-family homes are relatively affordable — what some writers have labeled “Zoom” towns. People roughly ages 21 to 40 have accounted for a huge share of home purchase loans in places …

Read More

Posted on by

What 2020 Was Like for People in the Retail Industry

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 …

Read More

Posted on by

Nancye Radmin, Pioneer of Plus-Size Fashion, Is Dead at 82

Nancye Radmin, a pioneer of plus-size fashion who for two decades ran an upscale chain of stores, the Forgotten Woman, that served a group of women who had otherwise been overlooked by high fashion, died on Dec. 8 at her home in Lakeland, Fla. She was 82.The death was confirmed by her son Brett Radmin.For most of her life, Ms. Radmin hovered around a size 8 and preferred wearing fine fabrics like cashmere and jacquard. But by her second pregnancy, in 1976, she had gained 80 pounds and was a size 16. When she went shopping at her favorite stores in Manhattan for some …

Read More

Posted on by

Nancye Radmin, Pioneer of Plus-Size Fashion, Is Dead at 82

Nancye Radmin, a pioneer of plus-size fashion who for two decades ran an upscale chain of stores, the Forgotten Woman, that served a group of women who had otherwise been overlooked by high fashion, died on Dec. 8 at her home in Lakeland, Fla. She was 82.The death was confirmed by her son Brett Radmin.For most of her life, Ms. Radmin hovered around a size 8 and preferred wearing fine fabrics like cashmere and jacquard. But by her second pregnancy, in 1976, she had gained 80 pounds and was a size 16. When she went shopping at her favorite stores in Manhattan for some …

Read More