This Popular Clothing Company Is Permanently Closing Over 100 Stores

Many companies have recently announced mass store closures.

While many businesses have closed stores here and there, others have made bigger moves. In April, Rite Aid revealed that it is planning to close a total of 145 stores, which is 82 more locations than shoppers were already expecting to lose when the company first announced in Dec. 2021 that it would be shuttering stores in 2022. The popular drugstore chain said it is getting rid of "unprofitable stores" in order to help "significantly reduce costs" for the company.

And just this month, Chico's confirmed that the company is planning to close a total of 40 stores in the 2022 fiscal year—which will include "underperforming, mall-based Chico's and White House Black Market boutiques."

Now, another clothing company is axing over 100 locations.

This popular brand is permanently shutting down all of its stores in one area.

Nike has just announced that it will be exiting the Russian market completely by permanently closing all of its brick-and-mortar stores in the country, Reuters reported on June 23. This news comes just three months after the apparel company temporarily closed all of its stores in Russia and made merchandise purchases on its website and app unavailable for the country in early March.

"Nike has made the decision to leave the Russian marketplace," the company said in a statement to the news outlet. "Our priority is to ensure we are fully supporting our employees while we responsibly scale down our operations over the coming months."

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This decision will impact over 100 Nike stores.

According to CNN, Nike has posted a note on on its official Russian website telling consumers that its website and mobile app will "no longer be available in this region" and that its stores "will not reopen." This decision is expected to impact more than 100 stores for the company, as Nike was operating about 116 locations in Russia as of March 2022, per The Wall Street Journal. It was also reported in May that the company has chosen not to renew agreements with the Inventive Retail Group (IRG), its largest franchisee in Russia that operated 37 Nike-branded stores in the country, per Reuters.

But despite the large number of affected stores, this move is not likely to impact the company in a large way. During a third-quarter earnings call in March, Matthew Friend, Nike's chief financial officer, said that the company's business in Russian and Ukraine accounted for less than 1 percent of the retailer's total revenue—making Nike's exit "largely symbolic rather than material," Reuters explained.

This is not the only popular company that has recently cut ties with Russia.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, hundreds of businesses have curtailed or shut down their operations in Russia this year as the war continues, according to Bloomberg. Nike is hardly the only U.S. company that has decided to make a full exit from Russia. In May, both McDonald's and Starbucks confirmed that they would be ending all their operations in the country.

McDonald's temporarily closed its 847 restaurants in March before announcing two months later that it would sell its entire portfolio of restaurants in Russia to a local buyer that would no longer be able to use the McDonald's name, logo, branding, or menu, The Wall Street Journal reported. "We have a commitment to our global community and must remain steadfast in our values,” Chris Kempczinski, McDonald's chief executive, said in a statement at the time.

And in May, Starbucks announced that it was permanently shuttering its 130 stores in Russia after also first suspending operations in March. The popular coffee chain had been a presence in the country for 15 years after first opening in Russia in 2007, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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