The Children’s Place has been a staple in the community, providing fashionable wear for little one’s throughout the country and beyond since 1969. Well, amid the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, the retail giant is set to close 300 brick and mortar stores by the end of 2021.
“We are now targeting to close an additional 300 stores by the end of fiscal 2021, with 200 closures planned for this year, and 100 closures planned for 2021,” said Children’s Place President and CEO Jane Elfers in a press release. “This initiative will greatly reduce our reliance on our brick and mortar channel and we are targeting our mall-based, brick and mortar portfolio to represent less than 25% of our revenue entering fiscal 2022.”
Elfers also said in the statement that the company has been focused on, “Superior Product, Digital Transformation and Fleet Optimization, to operate at a high level during the current crisis, with the ability to fulfill our outsized online demand through our advanced omni-channel capabilities.”
The company shared their first-quarter financial results stating that, “net sales decreased 38.1% to $255.2 million in the three months ended May 2 2020 from $412.4 million in the three months ended May 4, 2019, primarily as a result of temporary store closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
According to Elfers, she stated that the company is positive that they are moving in the right direction, taking customers online. She said that the company, “believe[s] that our strong digital foundation, coupled with the rapidly changing shopping patterns of our consumer, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our strong value proposition and our core, digital-savvy, millennial customer, will result in the continued acceleration of our digital revenue. The challenges that lie ahead are many, and visibility is limited, but we are moving forward with urgency and focus, guided by the strategic pillars of our long-standing transformation strategy. We believe that our superior product, coupled with our unique ability, at this critical juncture, to significantly grow digital revenue, while meaningfully reducing our reliance on our store portfolio, will result in consolidated market share gains for years to come.”
The Children’s Place isn’t the only kid-friendly business that has been plagued with closures. Last year, Toys “R” Us shut down all physical stores in addition to Gymboree filing for Chapter 11. Recently, in The Wall Street Journal, it was reported that Chuck E. Cheese is in danger of never reopening again as a result of the ongoing closures due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
