Unable ‘to recover,’ shuttering for good
French clothing shop, its sister store, among casualties
On March 16, 2020, Kathryn Sandretto locked the doors of French clothing store Acote, closing indefinitely along with every other nonessential retailer in San Francisco.
Sandretto, the store manager, didn’t know when the Hayes Valley shop would reopen after six Bay Area counties told everyone to shelter in place from the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic. The image of her locking the gate in front of her store’s entrance was published on the front page of The Chronicle the next day, a herald of the pandemic’s toll on businesses.
It took another 91 days for Acote to reopen, with masks and hand sanitizer marking the new reality.
Now, almost exactly a year into the pandemic, Acote closed permanently at 597 Hayes St. on March 21. Its sister store Cotelac on Fillmore Street is closing on March 28.
“We just weren’t ever able to recover,” Sandretto said. “Hayes Valley got hit really hard.”
Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of City Hall staff, tourists, tech workers at nearby companies like Twitter and Uber, and patrons of Civic Center concerts and performances have vanished from the area. Foot traffic plunged at Acote from 40 daily shoppers on a prepandemic weekend to three or fewer.
More than a dozen Hayes Valley stores and restaurants have shuttered permanently during the pandemic, including Aiken, Dish, Dobbs Ferry, Ernest Alexander, Gazette, the Grove, Hill City, Nancy Boy, the Riddler, Siren, Stacks, Vepublic and Ver Unica.
Sales dropped by around 60% at Acote, Sandretto said. The most recent holiday season saw fourfigure sales, down from six figures in 2019. The store was already struggling to compete against online shopping, and it wasn’t prepared to pivot. No one was interested in curbside pickup, she said.
Acote’s landlord reduced rent by half, but it wasn’t enough, Sandretto said. The store is Acote’s only U.S. location and opened in 2015.
The monthslong ban of outdoor dining further crippled the area, but even after it returned, hungry visitors weren’t that interested in buying clothing.
“People want to eat. They’re not really there to shop,” she said. “The shop is a novelty for people to hop in while they’re waiting for their table.”
“The job just became very precarious and daunting,” she said. “It felt like you were waiting for the end.”
It isn’t just a ghost town. Hayes Valley, once a vibrant, upscale shopping destination, has become one of the city’s biggest crime zones.
The 94102 zip code, which includes Hayes Valley and part of the Tenderloin, had 166 commercial burglaries last year, the highest of any zip code in the city, according to police data published by local news website Public Comment. Citywide burglaries jumped 62.2% last year, while other crimes fell nearly 40%.
Around nine people snatched products off the shelves and ran out at Acote in the past few months, forcing the store to start locking its doors and admitting only some customers.
Police and city officials have vowed to prioritize safety, but Sandretto saw only modest improvements in the last couple weeks. “I feel like the police are trying,” she said, but she stopped reporting
“In the fashion industry, it’s very difficult. Business is really bad. I’m trying to hang on.”
Cathy Groener, U.S. market manager for Cotelac and its Acote affiliate
thefts. “I knew it wasn’t going to make a difference.”
Across the street, consumer
tech store B8ta closed indefinitely after staff were robbed at gunpoint in February.
That was the breaking point for Sandretto. B8ta’s workers checked on her and their absence made the street feel even more unsafe.
Cathy Groener, the U.S. market manager for Cotelac and its Acote affiliate, said San Francisco has seen worse crime than its other stores in New York, Connecticut and Santa Monica.
At the Cotelac store on Fillmore Street, people would yell at the twoperson staff. Someone broke in through the store’s skylight and then returned a week later.
Cotelac closed its Boston store at the end of 2020. The Palo Alto store remains open, but Groener said she’s in negotiations with the landlord and it could close.
“In the fashion industry, it’s very difficult,” she said. “Business is really bad. I’m trying to hang on.”
Sandretto doesn’t know what’s next for her, but she’s considering departing the retail sector completely.