A Gap store in San Francisco. The retailer shut its stores in March and furloughed most of its workers amid the pandemic.
Photo: john g mabanglo/ShutterstockWhen Gap Inc. GPS -3.76% begins reopening stores this weekend, shoppers will notice a few differences. Fitting rooms and restrooms will be closed, and it wants to turn face masks into a fashion statement.
The company, which owns the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains among others, plans to reopen roughly 800 North American stores this month, beginning this weekend with a handful of locations in Texas. Along with T-shirts and jeans, it will be selling fabric face masks, like a pack of two for $10 that was recently available on Gap.com.
Like other retailers, Gap shut its stores in March and furloughed most of its workers as state and local governments ordered nonessential businesses to close and people to shelter at home amid the coronavirus pandemic. Last month, it raised $2.25 billion in secured debt, after warning it burned through half its cash savings while stores were shut.
Gap, which operates more than 3,300 stores globally with most of them in North America, was struggling with weak sales before the pandemic. Earlier this year, it abandoned plans to break up the company and changed its leadership.
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The San Francisco company is following a few other chains, including Macy’s Inc., that began inching their physical stores back to life last week. The process is complicated, because each state and locality has its own rules, and it is unclear how eager consumers are to rush back to stores, restaurants, movie theaters and other public spaces.
Sonia Syngal, who in March was promoted to CEO from her previous job running Old Navy, said the company has some advantages coming out of the crisis. Only about a fifth of its stores are in indoor shopping malls, and it gets about a quarter of its sales from e-commerce. The retailer is fulfilling online orders from about 1,000 stores and plans to double that to 2,000 this month.
“We’re looking thoughtfully at our real estate,” Ms. Syngal said in an interview, adding that the company, which withheld April rents, is in negotiations with landlords about reopening stores, but may not reopen all of them. “We’ll be using this as an opportunity to refashion the company for what we want it to look like over the next 50 years,” she said.
Nordstrom Inc. said Tuesday it plans to permanently close 16 of its 116 department stores and restructure operations as it deals with the fallout from the coronavirus. The company said the restructuring of its support and corporate staff will result in $150 million in cost savings. It had previously said it planned to reduce costs by $500 million this year.
Nordstrom hasn’t said when it plans to start reopening stores. In addition to its department stores, it operated about 250 Nordstrom Rack off-price stores as of March.
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Gap’s reopened stores will have plexiglass at the registers and other health measures, including frequent cleaning and signs to ensure shoppers follow social distancing rules. Each location will have a table at the entrance with hand sanitizer.
Gap is joining other retailers in trying to turn face masks into a fashion statement. It introduced fabric masks in colorful designs on Banana Republic’s website last month and they sold out within the hour, Ms. Syngal said. The masks are made from excess fabric at the company’s factories. A portion of the proceeds will go to charity.
Many of the stores it reopens first will be in outlet centers, Ms. Syngal said. The company has reopened 200 stores in China, and noticed that outlet centers recovered first.
Write to Suzanne Kapner at Suzanne.Kapner@wsj.com
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