Tales from the Shutdown: Upscale SoHo Stores Boarded up to Avoid Looting
Normally brimming with customers, SoHo is a ghost town. Bereft of foot traffic.
And now, multinational brands are fleeing the retail void left in the wake of the COVID-19 shutdown.
Several upscale stores across the neighborhood are now boarded up, allegedly due to fears of looting. Retailers such as Coach, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Sephora, among others, allegedly liquidated the shelves and erected plywood to protect the windows.
These large stores are typically loss-leaders for these valuable brands. Basically, expensive advertising. It remains unclear whether the companies will return…
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