Retailers are slowly leaving San Francisco. The latest example is the last remaining Nordstrom store downtown. The establishment closed its doors after three decades of operation.
(Video: ABC 7 News)
San Francisco: @Nordstrom’s has officially closed after 30+ years on Market Street
The city has fallen. pic.twitter.com/ffdO872quy
— Katie Daviscourt (@KatieDaviscourt) August 28, 2023
The reason for the closure? Workers blame it, in part, on rising crime in the city. "It is definitely partially due to the crime in the area. Covid had a big impact," a former worker told ABC 7 News.
It does not coincide with the statements given by the company's director of stores, Jamie Nordstrom, to the Los Angeles Times. According to the manager, the reason for the closure is not due to crime, but to the changes that the city center has experienced:
The dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years, impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully.
Dick's Sporting Goods Records Economic Losses from Crime
Nordstrom is not the only one affected by the situation in the Californian city. Dick's Sporting Goods said "organized retail crime" had generated losses of about $74 million in net income during the second quarter of 2023. That is, the sports store lost 23% of its quarterly earnings, although sales had grown by 3.6% due, in part, to "our ability to effectively manage inventory shrink," which is the expression used in retail to refer to both lost and stolen merchandise.
A statement was given by Dick's chairman and CEO Lauren Hobart during a shareholder call on Tuesday. In it, the New York Post said, the directive again referred to the loss of merchandise as the main cause of its economic losses:
Based on the results from our most recent physical inventory cycle, the impact of theft on our shrink was meaningful to both our second-quarter results and our go-forward expectations for the balance of the year.
Retailers Hit Top by Crime in California
The crime problem is getting worse in California. And the main affected are the retail stores that see how day after day their merchandise is stolen by criminals. One example was the Gucci store in Los Angeles. There, at the beginning of August, a video went viral in which a group of nine men was seen entering the establishment without any qualms and running out of it with several items they had stolen while the security guard observed the situation without hardly reacting:
We are living in a LAWLESS society… pic.twitter.com/KBqiwj0VIF
— Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen_1) August 1, 2023
Weeks later, something similar happened at a 7-Eleven. A criminal walked into an establishment in Stockton, California, and began wandering around the store while grabbing handfuls of tobacco products and throwing them into a trash can. At this point the workers warn him to stop and leave the facility.
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Faced with the thief's indifference, one worker held him and then threw him to the ground, while the other grabbed a wooden stick and started to beat him. At the end of the incidnet, the offender is seen pleading with the workers to stop beating him.
Just after the incident occurred at the Stockton, California, establishment, local police said both employees were being investigated for assault. Days later, it was reported that the workers would not finally be charged.
