The New York Times - USA (2020-12-02)

said. “I just can’t see people giving
away the feeling of comfort.”
The retail landscape is chang-
ing with the new needs of the re-
mote worker. Bankruptcies this
year included Brooks Brothers
and the owner of Ann Taylor and
Loft. Rent the Runway closed all
of its stores and removed its un-
limited subscription option. In
Gap Inc.’s latest quarter, net sales
soared 15 percent at Old Navy and
35 percent at Athleta while plum-
meting 34 percent at Banana Re-
public.
Gap named a new head of Ba-
nana Republic last week and said
on an earnings call that the brand
had been “working hard to update
its product assortment” for an era
of remote work, favoring more
casual clothes over tailored gar-
ments and suiting.
Professional women have long
been a lucrative market. Retailers
see them as customers who tend
to have money to spend and are
willing to pay for apparel that will
help them feel confident in the
workplace, fit into busy lifestyles
or offer up the right look for a
“desk to dinner” sort of day. The
attire is often dry-clean only,
stiffer and more structured than
weekend clothes, and modest in
neckline and hemline. Many of
those products — and how they
are marketed — have now
changed.
Last fall, Banana Republic’s site
and social media featured colorful
heels and models wearing “quin-
tessential Banana Republic with a
modern twist — think cozy cable
knits and Italian corduroy, double-
breasted plaid blazers and mole-
skin jackets.” This season, its site
includes looks for virtual inter-
views and a “work leisure” sec-
tion, with soft ponte leggings,
turtleneck sweater dresses, chee-
tah-print socks and “coatigans.”
Some women appear to be
clearing out office attire from their
closets through donations and re-
sales. The RealReal said consign-
ments of work dresses more than
doubled between Aug. 1 and Oct.
15 compared with the same period
last year, exceeding significant
jumps in consignments of cocktail
dresses and evening dresses. On
Poshmark, listings of women’s
blazers and suit jackets from July
to Sept. 30 jumped 30 percent
from a year earlier, while listings
of women’s pencil skirts rose 32
percent.
Jackie Temkin, 33, had already
started selling many of her more
formal Washington, D.C., office
clothes on Poshmark after gradu-
ating from business school in 2018
and establishing a design studio in
Charlottesville, Va. But she said

demand for such apparel had

seemed to dry up since March.

“I feel that a lot of employers

have learned you really can get a

lot of stuff done at home and work-

place norms from before are no

longer applicable,” Ms. Temkin

said. She added that her work

wardrobe was already radically

different from how she recalled

her mother dressing for her job as

a lawyer.

a hoodie and sweatpants like the

engineers because that is so not

me,’ ” said Sarah LaFleur, the

brand’s founder and chief execu-

tive. “That style has become more

mainstream now, so a lot of what

we have been doing is really de-

signing to that woman.”

It includes cashmere sweaters,

a “jardigan” jacket and “better

than jean” pants. Ms. LaFleur said

that while sales of Zoom-friendly

tops had initially outpaced bot-

toms during the pandemic, there

was a sudden uptick in pants in

June.

She could relate. “After 100 days

of being in sweatpants, I needed to

feel like I was getting out of bed,”

she said, adding that customers

have gravitated to pants that look

tailored but feel as comfortable as

sweatpants.

The company has also re-

branded some of its wares. Its

crisp-looking “Colby pants,” once

marketed in an “Origami Suiting”

collection as wrinkle resistant and

easy to fold for business trips,

were renamed “Colby joggers”

online, with new emphasis on

their casual appeal and elastic

waistband. Sales soared sev-

enfold. The brand was helped be-

cause it already carried machine-

washable work wear, a product of

Ms. LaFleur’s belief that dry

cleaning is “a sexist industry”

based on its prices for men’s and

women’s clothing.

Kathryn Minshew, the 35-year-

old founder of the Muse, a site for

job seekers in their 20s and 30s,

said she had become far less toler-

ant of portions of her wardrobe

that she once wore to the office, in-

cluding trousers and certain

dresses.

“I didn’t have very much cloth-

ing that was incredibly uncom-

fortable, but I had a lot of clothing

that was normal work wear un-

comfortable,” she said. “It was a

little bit structured, a little bit

tight, it pulls a little bit when you

move in certain ways. A lot of

work dresses and work tops for

women that are fitted, they’re fine,

but they’re not the most comfort-

able things.”

She anticipated that “many

women will keep a part of their

closet for powerhouse outfits and

special occasions.” But, she add-

ed, “I do believe it will get smaller

over time the longer that the pan-

demic goes on and therefore the

more that we collectively get used

to this type of living and working.”

Ultimately, Ms. Minshew said,

any longer-term shifts could help

ease the pressure women feel to

present themselves a certain way

in the workplace.

Indeed, Ms. Rittenberg from

Google said she realized that she

was dressing for herself more

than ever rather than for clients,

her team or the office at large,

which has been refreshing.

“The pandemic equals so much

craze in our life,” she said. It

stands to reason, she said, that

people are “trying to make their

clothes as comfortable, fuzzy and

warm as possible so we don’t have

an added layer of structure and

chaos that we didn’t ask for.”

After Covid-19, Work Wear for Women May Never Be the Same

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HARUKA SAKAGUCHI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

“After 100 days of being in sweatpants, I needed to feel like I was getting out of bed,” said Sarah LaFleur, top, the founder of M.M.LaFleur, which sells

stylish but comfortable work apparel. Above, Rebecca Rittenberg, a Google employee whose new work look falls somewhere between blazers and pajamas.

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE

“She had dress suits and skirt

suits and things like that, and that

was their uniform every day,” Ms.

Temkin said. She recalled her

mother once using fake tanner on

her legs in the summer to make it

look as though she were wearing

pantyhose. “It’s just such a huge

shift,” she said.

M.M.LaFleur, a seller of stylish

women’s workplace apparel that

was founded in 2011, has worked

to recover from the hit it has taken

this year. The brand has cut back

on suiting for the spring and

leaned more heavily into the

“power casual” category, which it

introduced several years ago.

“It was actually inspired by our

San Francisco tech customers,

who were saying, ‘I can’t wear

dresses or a suit to work because

then people think I’m interview-

ing, but I’m also not going to wear

get swallowed up or you’re going
to fail.”
Shareholders will get $26.79 in
cash and 0.0776 shares of Sales-
force stock in exchange for each
share of Slack, according to Tues-
day’s deal announcement. Sales-
force said it planned to incorpo-
rate Slack’s communication soft-
ware into every aspect of its cloud
software offerings.
Marc Benioff, the chief execu-
tive of Salesforce, was effusive
about the combination, calling it
“a match made in heaven.” In a
conference call, he said that Stew-
art Butterfield, Slack’s chief exec-
utive, and Bret Taylor, Sales-
force’s president, had presented
him with the deal.
Slack’s trajectory reminded him
of Salesforce’s, Mr. Benioff said,
and he marveled at the possibili-
ties of combining the two compa-
nies’ data and tools. “My eyes lit
up,” he said. “This is our ultimate
vision.”
Mr. Taylor said the pandemic
had fundamentally shifted con-
sumer behavior and the way peo-
ple work. Buying Slack would help
Salesforce’s customers make the

digital transformation, he said.

Roughly 90 percent of Slack’s en-

terprise customers also use Sales-

force.

Mr. Butterfield will continue

leading Slack, which will become

an operating unit of Salesforce.

Slack, which was founded in

2010 by Mr. Butterfield, grew

quickly and previously attracted

— and rejected — takeover offers

from the likes of Google, Microsoft

and Amazon. Its valuation was

about $19.5 billion when it went

public last year, but its shares lat-

er sank.

Demand for Slack’s products,

which allow people to communi-

cate and collaborate with one an-

other, has increased as people

work from home during the pan-

demic.

While the company said in Sep-

tember that revenue rose 49 per-

cent to $216 million in the three

months ending in July and that

the pandemic had created a “sig-

nificant increase in demand and

usage of Slack,” it also said it did

not expect that rise to continue.

Layoffs at some of its customers

have hurt its business, the com-

pany said.

On Tuesday, Slack reported that

revenue grew 39 percent in the

three months ending with Octo-

ber.

At the same time, Slack has

faced increasing competitive

pressure from Microsoft. Teams,

Microsoft’s collaboration product,

reported 115 million daily users in

October, up 50 percent from April.

Slack has not provided an update

on the 12 million daily users it re-

ported a year ago.

In July, Slack filed a complaint

against Microsoft with the Euro-

pean Commission, claiming

Microsoft had unfairly bundled

Teams with its suite of Microsoft

Office work products. Microsoft

has offered the software alongside

Office since Teams was released

in 2017.

“When you’re a scrappy start-

up going against an 800-pound go-

rilla that’s one of the most well-

capitalized companies in exist-

ence, it’s tough to compete,” Mr.

Purk said of Slack. “This is more

or less saying: ‘We can’t compete

with Microsoft Teams anymore.

We need more firepower.’ ”

This year, Slack’s shares were

up roughly 25 percent, though

they remained below the level of

the company’s public market de-

but, before news of a deal with

Salesforce broke last week. Since

the news, Slack’s value has risen

to more than $25 billion.

Salesforce, which provides

marketing and sales software,

among other products, has been

highly acquisitive as it looks to

grow. Under Mr. Benioff, its chief

executive, Salesforce has bought

at least 60 companies, including

27 in the last five years, according

to S&P Capital IQ.

Salesforce stock has climbed

nearly 40 percent this year, valu-

ing the company at $220 billion.

On Tuesday, it said its revenue

rose 20 percent to $5.24 billion in

the three months ending with Oc-

tober.

In February, Salesforce paid

$1.3 billion for Vlocity, a mobile

software provider. Last year, it

bought Tableau, a data analytics

provider, for $15.3 billion; in 2018,

it bought MuleSoft, a data integra-

tion company, for $6.5 billion; and

in 2016, it bought Demandware, an

e-commerce software maker, for

$2.8 billion. It also invested $250

million in the data warehousing

company Snowflake just before it

went public in September.

Salesforce has had its own work

collaboration product, Chatter,

since 2010. Chatter has had “lim-

ited traction,” according to a Gold-

man Sachs report last week that

touted the “strategic merit” of

Salesforce buying Slack.

In August, Mr. Benioff told ana-

lysts that Salesforce was not seek-

ing acquisitions, implying that

valuations were too high. “We’re

not in a good M&A environment,”

he said, referring to mergers and

acquisitions. “I just don’t see it.”

He added: “Maybe things could

change."

In September, Mark Hawkins,

Salesforce’s chief financial officer,

told analysts that the company

would continue to be “opportun-

istic” with respect to deals.

On Tuesday, Mr. Butterfield

tweeted that Slack would remain

“an independent and open plat-

form” and said its mission had not

changed.

Bank of America served as fi-

nancial adviser to Salesforce,

while Qatalyst Partners and Gold-

man Sachs advised Slack.

Salesforce Says

It’s Buying Slack

For $27.7 Billion

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE

The Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, left. Stewart Butterfield, who founded Slack 10 years ago and is its chief

executive, said the company would become an operating unit of Salesforce, a workplace software company.

Erin Griffith reported from San

Francisco, and Lauren Hirsch from

New York.

‘A scrappy start-up’

gets firepower to fight

Microsoft Teams.

JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES CARLOS CHAVARRÍA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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