Warm’s independent spirit—Beattie and Magnotta own the store without backers or investors—has been key to its charm. But it also puts Warm in a difficult position amid New York’s current shutdown, with almost all stores, restaurants, theaters, schools, museums, and offices closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. A week ago, before New York had gone completely quiet, Beattie shared a photo of her and Magnotta on @thewarmstore’s Instagram page to commemorate the store’s eighth birthday: “Eight years ago we opened Warm, our little collective dream world in a store,” she wrote. “Please continue to support [love] stories like ours—small biz needs you now more than ever!” Two days later, we woke up to a different city, with more and more cases of the virus and government-mandated closures of many gathering spaces. Her next post read: “We have no choice but to take a time out and close shop for two weeks. As a small business funded only by our personal savings, this loss of revenue is devastating and potentially fatal. We hope you remember and support small businesses like ours when we reopen.”
Heart emojis and messages of support flooded the comments. It’s hard to imagine that any store, restaurant, or market isn’t suffering right now, regardless of its size. But it’s the small, independent shops that are being hit the hardest: They don’t have cushions of investor capital or massive global teams to keep the lights on without money coming in. Plus, things were already tough for retail before the virus set in. “No one was in amazing shape before this,” Beattie tells Vogue. “But we had a really great beginning of March. People were coming in to buy things for their spring break trips, and they just seemed really excited by new spring merchandise. It was helpful that the temperatures were warming up. Then on Thursday of last week, things slowed down a lot, and by Friday, [they] came to a screeching halt.” She continues: “It’s conflicting [to close] because the people who came in did so because they said we make them feel happy, and that we were a much-needed distraction from the news. Our customers have said we’re a store that feels like an escape from reality, even in good times, but even more so lately.”
Because Warm was conceived as that IRL, personal experience, it hasn’t had an e-commerce platform. Customers have been sending Beattie e-mails or Instagram DMs to place orders, or just to say hi, and her team is offering to consult with shoppers via e-mail or phone for home delivery. Beattie said she feels now isn’t the time to push sales too hard, but the prospect of closing the store for weeks, if not an entire month, has forced her to reconsider a website. “We always loved the idea of people having to experience things in the store—the smell, the touch, and making everything tactile,” she says. “But that sure doesn’t work in strange times like this. It has made us realize we need to have multiple channels to reach people in the future, and that while the in-store experience is romantic, there is a place for the practical as well.” (Right now, she and her team are working on putting together an edit of their favorite new arrivals to launch online, but in the meantime, you can snag her tie-dyed hoodies via Instagram. Warm’s in-house collection of printed dresses, which is a separate business, does have its own website you can shop now.)
Still, Beattie was refreshingly candid about the struggles of launching a new platform with minimal revenue coming in. She’s also had another challenge thrown into the mix: homeschooling her three sons, whose schools have all closed for the foreseeable future. “I’m not an educator, and it is legitimately challenging,” she says. “I’m trying to do that while I’m designing my spring 2021 collection [for Warm’s in-house line], and Rob is trying to put together as many jobs as he can for his photographers [editor’s note: Magnotta is also the president of a photography agency]. The homeschool really takes a lot of organization, and I’m not super tech savvy, so even all of this electronic learning and Zoom is an entire crash course for me, too.”
The biggest question mark for Beattie and Magnotta is, unsurprisingly, making rent. President Trump and Governor Cuomo have both promised to issue zero-interest loans to small businesses, and have asked the Federal Reserve to work with banks across the country to expedite the certification process. But it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution: “We aren’t people who live in debt—the Midwestern in me tries not to live beyond my means!” Beattie says. “A loan is still something that has to be repaid and personally guaranteed. We already have a mortgage [on our house] and tuitions, and there are concerns with taking on a huge debt just to stay open. I don’t know if that’s the answer.”
“I’m not giving up hope, and it is not the plan at all to close our doors,” Beattie adds. “But the realist in me thinks this isn’t going to be a two week thing, it’s going to be months and months. We have to get creative and try to figure out how we’re going to make this work. Having the in-house line saves me, because when the house is quiet, I’ve been designing our spring collection, and some new tees and hoodies that just feel happy. It’s a nice distraction. Those pieces won’t come out for a year, so hopefully by then, the world is a different place than it is at this very moment,” she continues. “And when those things are in stores, I will touch them and remember sitting on my sofa when the world was so dark and sad. I believe with all my heart that the greatest, most genuine art and creativity comes out of darker times. So in a year, what we see in stores will hopefully be optimistic and cheerful.”
