This Stinks! Victoria's Secret Closing A Quarter Of Its Stores

While this doesn't quite amount to a disaster of epic proportions, now the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic is real for me. In part, due to changes in our lifestyles caused by the pandemic, Victoria's Secret announced today it's closing at least a quarter of its stores. That's about 250 to start, out of about 1,100 across North America. Victoria's Secret has a store in Crossroads Mall in Portage, and sister store Bath and Body Works in Battle Creek, Portage and Kalamazoo. No official word yet, on which stores are closing, but this news follows a round of store closings in 2019.

I know, people will be losing their jobs, but my first thought was, where the ever livin' am I going to find Christmas presents for my fiancee, Kathy.

I'm a terrible gift giver. Yes, I know a bad gift when I see one, but coming up with a good one is on the same level as water torture for me. Great. More stress.

Here's the business part of the story, from CNN. The company has been in trouble for a while now. That part you can probably blame on Amazon; everybody else does. Management tried to take the company private and that failed. So now they're shutting down a quarter of their stores, most of them in malls; because they don't expect foot traffic in malls to ever get back to what it was back when malls were even remotely the places to be. That part you can blame pretty squarely on the pandemic. And it gives you a clue as to what business really thinks what's coming our way, rather than the warm fuzzies we see on TV commercials this Spring. As far as the future, it's never a good sign when you see the word "beleaguered" used.

Yes, I know there's Ulta and others, and the staff at Ulta has shown compassion for me, when I've come in to shop for a gift there. But Victoria's Secret, that's big.