Altschul's apparel store closes after 113 years in business

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story had incorrect information about Floors Alive, which is still operating but has moved from the Best Square plaza in Norfolk to 6353 Indian River Road in Virginia Beach.

NORFOLK

The poster lying on the floor of Bob Cooper's office said it all.

On it, a thermometer measured sales for the Christmas 2010 season at Altschul's, a clothing store with a 113-year history in the city. The goal was $160,000, but the red color of the gauge stopped at $99,600. Written in the margin: "Worst Ever!"

As it turns out, this year was even worse.

Altschul's tallied $78,000 in holiday sales, not enough to sustain the small department store.

This week, workers emptied the store, breaking down metal racks that once held crisp men's suits and brightly colored women's dresses and moving out display cases where shoppers could select jewelry, sunglasses and cosmetics. A liquidator will auction the fixtures.

One rack still held women's undergarments. Christmas decorations filled a plastic bin on the floor. A cluster of female mannequin heads stood on one table. Against another, stacks of old sale signs harkened to better times: "Ladies' hats up to 30 percent off," "Giant Clearance," and "Now Hiring Salespersons."

Altschul's put its focus on customer service and touted itself as the place to come "when you're ready to be noticed," Cooper said. With clothing in a rainbow of colors, customers counted on the store to deck them out for church or other occasions.

Sarah Whitaker came through the door Thursday to shop for a coat and take advantage of after-Christmas sales. She was disappointed, she said.

"I've always counted on these people when I need something," said Whitaker, 71, of Norfolk. "They help you to pick out what looks good on you. They can alter it if it doesn't fit right. And they've been doing this for years."

Helena Dodson stopped by to pick up a suit she had ordered. Her mother first brought her to Altschul's as a youngster, and she and her husband liked to buy hats there, she said.

"Thirty some years ago, Altschul's was THE store for a lot of African American people," said Dodson, 61, a Chesapeake resident and president of the Chesapeake branch of the NAACP.

"You're looking for something, you know Altschul's will have it, or Altschul's will order it for you," she said.

Many of the customers at Altschul's were blue-collar workers, Cooper said. They were hit hard by the housing crisis. Several lost jobs.

"People got trapped," he said. "They would come to me with horror stories" about escalating mortgage payments and foreclosures.

The week before Christmas, Cooper and his wife told their employees the store would close on Christmas Eve.

"Nobody was surprised," Cooper said. "Everybody was disappointed."

Altschul's opened on Church Street in 1898 and later moved to a building on St. Paul's Boulevard that was demolished to make way for MacArthur Center. The retailer settled on Granby Street in the mid-1980s.

Five years ago, Altschul's moved from its 3,500-square-foot space on Granby to a 13,000-square-foot location in Best Square plaza on Military Highway because business was booming.

More than 300 customers stood in line at the door the day the new store opened, and sales that year jumped by 50 percent, Cooper said. Altschul's brought in $275,000 in December alone.

A year later, the store's books showed the first signs of a dip. Sales have fallen since, Cooper said.

Starting in 2008, Cooper gradually cut staff from 20 to 10 workers. He trimmed inventory and advertising costs. In the end, he didn't have enough money to advertise his going-out-of-business sale, where everything was discounted 50 percent.

The $500,000 that he and his wife invested in Altschul's has disappeared. They're stretching the remaining funds to pay employees, overdue rent and the amount due on a bank loan.

Cooper, 64, choked up Thursday as he sat in his office overlooking the sales floor. He worked in retail for 40 years and started at Altschul's as an employee, taking over the store in 1996. In hindsight, he said, he wished he had planned for riskier times when he relocated.

"The size of the location is what killed me."

The downturn, though, has forced many businesses to close. In August, First Colony Coffee & Tea Co., a 109-year-old manufacturer based in Norfolk's Ghent neighborhood, ceased operations because of the high price of beans and weakened sales. Norfolk Sash & Door, a building materials supplier in Norfolk for 118 years, closed the previous month.

At Best Square, other empty stores surround Altschul's. RoomStore, a small furniture chain based in Richmond, closed its showroom next door before filing for bankruptcy this month. Floors Alive, which anchored another side of the plaza, recently moved its store to Virginia Beach.

Cooper said he had planned to sell the business next year and estimated it would bring about $3 million. He would have given each of his employees a big bonus, he said.

"And I would have had a nice retirement."

Carolyn Shapiro, (757) 446-2270, carolyn.shapiro@pilotonline.com