Our daughter-in-law texted Lori the SOS: Stein Mart, my wife’s favorite clothing store, was going out of business.
“No, way,” I said, incredulously, when Lori shared the bad news. “All of them?”
“All 279 stores,” Lori whimpered.
“Well, we better get up there,” I said.
By “there,” I meant Louisville, although neither of us had any desire to travel to Louisville during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Back in April, I had given Lori a gift certificate to Stein Mart for her birthday because we were in lock-down; taking her out to eat and going shopping wasn’t an option in early April. The gift certificate was more of a deposit, a promissory note of hope, for better times to come when we could go out and properly celebrate her birthday, and as part of it, enjoy a visit to her favorite store.
It had been a part of our date-day agenda: go to a movie, eat out, and visit Stein Mart. It was like a 1-2-3 routine for time together, just the two of us.
Now the store was closing, and the gift certificate would soon be worthless. Online wasn’t an option on the sale items, either.
We read the signs on our way into the store: “EVERYTHING MUST GO,” “ALL SALES ARE FINAL.” So, we wore our masks, social distanced, and Lori shopped for her last time at Stein Mart.
Stein Mart has been good to me, too. I always found bargains, and their stores would often carry my hard-to-find size. Our kids liked to tease us about our penchant for the store that catered to our age group, but it worked for us.
Stein Mart’s off-price competitors, like T.J. Maxx, Marshall’s, Homegoods, and Ross, also had to shut their doors for a stretch during the pandemic. But apparently, their shoppers returned to their reopened stores in masks, ready to hunt for deals.
“(Stein Mart’s) position in market was more of an older crowd,” said Megan Murray, a Tampa Bay, Florida bankrupt attorney. “They’re not buying clothes because they’re not going to work… and their generation is not going out into stores,” she told The Tampa Bay Times in August 2020, when the store announced its bankruptcy.
I suppose the very reason Lori and I liked Stein Mart, the store’s appeal to our age demographic, was the very thing that led to the chain’s demise.
“I hate it that I won’t be going back to my favorite store,” Lori said as she put away her new clothes.
I thought the same thing today as I hung up my suit, a Stein Mart special, from over a year ago.
Then, I paused, reflecting on what Covid-19 had done to our consumer-oriented society, and I let the lesson sink in a bit deeper. I have not stopped working during this pandemic, but the clothes have become less and less important. I have all, indeed, MORE, than I need. And glancing down my closet, I see clothes I’ve had for years and years. Some I’ve not worn in quite some time.
“I’m good, in fact, better than good,” I said aloud to myself, surveying my clothing quotient.
“Do not be anxious about whether you will have enough clothes to wear,” I could hear Jesus saying from his Sermon on the Mount.
I’m still sad for Stein Mart, for the people who lost their jobs, and I will miss our Stein Mart stops on our date-days, should we ever have them like we once did.
And where will I take Lori to shop on her next birthday?
Then, as I unloaded groceries this afternoon, I noticed Lori had brought back some sneakers from her trip to Wal-Mart.
“Ah-Ha,” I said, holding them up like a trophy, “Wal-Mart: the new Stein Mart.”
But something in her wry grin tells me saying good-bye to Stein Mart is not going to be that easy.