Some CE Stores Still Remained Closed Tuesday Post-Irene

P.C. Richard & Son closed all 65 of its “showrooms” as well as its central distribution and two regional distribution centers “all day Sunday for Hurricane Irene,” President Gregg Richard told us. “We felt it best and safest for our employees to stay off the roads and home with their families,” he said. There were “no major damages other than reported trees down, power outages, and some minor flooding,” he said. All stores were open again Monday except three on Long Island, four in New Jersey and two in Connecticut, “only because of loss of power,” he said. That number soon dwindled to five. The retailer shut its four Manhattan stores at 2 p.m. Saturday, after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority shut down bus, subway and rail service in New York City, Richard said.

Nine Walmart and Sam’s Club stores remained closed early Tuesday afternoon -- one in Virginia, three in Connecticut and two each in New Jersey and New York, “mostly due to power outages,” spokeswoman Dianna Gee said. The New York stores were a Sam’s Club in Elmsford and a Walmart in Islandia, on Long Island. A Virginia distribution center also had to be closed. But she said the number of closures “keeps dropping,” telling us 13 had been closed that morning. At our deadline, the number was down to six. About 300 stores had closed temporarily due to power loss or flooding that caused road closures near some locations, she said. There were “no significant damages” to any Walmart or Sam’s Club locations, nor were there any critical injuries that she was aware of. The company felt “very fortunate” because 1,600 stores had been “in the path of Hurricane Irene,” she said. Some locations were able to remain open by using generators, she said.

Ahead of and after the storm, Sam’s Club and Walmart customers bought many batteries and flashlights, along with water and canned goods, Gee said. “We mobilized more than 800 truckloads of merchandise to meet the needs of customers before and after the storm,” she said. “Merchandise needs are changing after the storm,” but customers continued to buy batteries and flashlights, she said.

During the storm 117 Target stores were closed, but only one was unable to reopen 24 hours later, a spokesman for that company said. The one store -- in Fairfield, N.J. -- remained closed Tuesday afternoon due to area flooding, he said. The store won’t reopen until it’s deemed safe, he said. There was no major damage to that or any other Target store, he said. There were, however, many fallen trees that needed to be removed from Target parking lots, he said. Batteries, flashlights and water were the three most popular products before and after the storm, he said.

No Trans World Entertainment stores “sustained major damage, mostly leaking roofs I hear,” Mark Higgins, vice president of merchandising, said. Most of its stores in New Jersey, Long Island and north of that, including Boston, were closed on Sunday, and the company was still figuring out which stores remained closed as of Monday afternoon, he said. There were “no injuries,” he said.

By 4:30 Friday afternoon, a RadioShack store in the West Village in Manhattan had sold out of all portable radios, including weatherband models. They had one radio, a Grundig portable, without a weatherband, which a buyer snatched up while we were there. No other RadioShacks in the city had weather radios left, according to a store clerk, and while the Grundig radio took six “D” batteries to operate, the store had sold out of those far earlier in the day. All six of the other stores in the vicinity that we checked had no “D” batteries left either. RadioShack didn’t immediately comment about Irene’s impact companywide.

A Best Buy spokeswoman said her company had “store closures up and down” the East Coast, including in New York City. The chain was still “assessing the potential impact of Hurricane Irene on our store operations,” and was “operating under the guidance of the appropriate federal and local authorities, as well as major relief organizations,” she said Monday afternoon. She declined to provide specifics, such as which stores remained closed and what impact the transit shutdown on Saturday had on Best Buy sales in New York City.

We received a busy signal when we called Best Buy’s store in Baldwin, N.Y., a few times Tuesday. The company posted a message at its website saying that Long Island store on Sunrise Highway was “temporarily closed due to the recent storm.” Ahead of the storm, Nassau County, N.Y., officials had issued a “mandatory evacuation” order for residents living in areas of the county expected to get the brunt of the storm’s impact.

We phoned Best Buy’s Huntington, N.Y., store Monday to see if it had power. Although the store had power, almost everything else in the neighborhood didn’t. The recording that came on when we phoned said the store was out of “C” and “D” batteries and portable radios. A hot seller at Best Buy was the Eton American Red Cross Emergency Preparedness Radio at $59.99. We bought one Thursday at the Best Buy store on lower Broadway in Manhattan, using in-store pickup. That store was among the few listed in the New York City area as having any available in store for pickup. The vast majority listed it as “ship to store,” and the site said to allow 3-5 days for delivery. We observed five other Eton radios on the shelf Thursday morning awaiting in-store pickup. The radio has AM/FM and weather bands and is switchable to run on three rechargeable lithium batteries (AC adapter not included) or three alkaline “AA” cells. In a pinch, you can crank it for 90 seconds and the radio will play for 15 minutes. You can also connect a USB cord, for sale separately, to a cellphone and crank it for 90 seconds, providing a three-minute charge.

A published report claimed Irene caused an estimated $50 million in lost store sales. But National Retail Federation spokeswoman Kathy Grannis said, “We won’t really know how August sales were impacted until mid-September when we put out our August retail sales figures” based on U.S. Commerce Department data. NRF, however, believed “there was minimal impact to retailers’ bottom line as most of the country wasn’t affected by the storm at all, much like when we see big snow storms on the east coast before Christmas.” There was “definite regional impact but not enough for it to affect their bottom line,” she said. Anahita Wadia Khan, client services manager at research company Shoppertrak, said “several stores in the region didn’t have power or their phone lines up” Tuesday afternoon. “It probably will be about a week before Shoppertrak gets access to the data it needs to round out the impact of Irene,” Khan said.

GameStop spokeswoman Beth Sharum said her company was “still sorting” out what impact Irene had on it. All the GameStop stores on the South Shore of Nassau County, N.Y., that we called Tuesday afternoon were open.

Bob Nelson, Costco vice president of financial planning and investor relations, said, “I do not have any information to share with you at this time.” The company “will re-cap the impact of the Hurricane on our business on Thursday … in conjunction with the release of our August sales results,” he said by email.