Everyone Cries in the Fitting Room – What Torrid's 200 Store Closures Really Cost
Is this an end to a fiercely supportive frontline community?
“There’s this well-known thing that, like, everyone cries in the fitting room,” said the former retail leader.
As I spoke to her, I could feel it. The love of the brand. The community that was forged despite all the social pressure. A place to call home no matter what everyone else said. A refuge.
Torrid.
“It's where big girls find their confidence for the first time ever.” She said. “I had that experience, too. I was crying in the fitting room by myself, miserable. The store manager came in and was like, ‘girl, why are you so angry? Why are you so sad? What's going on?’ She reframed my entire perspective on my body with me in that moment. And my life was changed.
That is a moment that happens on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis in every single store that you're in."
I’ve worked in retail stores for half my life. I thought I knew about Torrid.
I was wrong.
The most corporate-y memo ever
Torrid recently announced they were closing almost 200 stores. A post went up on social media announcing the store reduction. The store teams, with no information, had to try to field questions from concerned customers.
Later that afternoon, store leaders were asked to join a company conference call. The call was brief. The executives took no questions, and leaders left feeling confused and anxious.
The stores were given “talking points” to communicate what was happening with the brand.
It begins,
“By now you’ve probably heard that Torrid is evolving…”
By now - not a great start, but let’s read on.
“…in doing so we are right-sizing our fleet to balance stores and online demand. With this Store Optimization Plan (yikes), we are expecting additional store closures to occur throughout 2025.”
Yadda yada yada -
The memo goes on to direct the employees to the “talking points.”
While stores are still an important part of our business, we are right sizing our fleet to balance store and online demand and made the decision to close some stores.
Many customers will continue to have a store in their area, and as we close a store, we will notify our customers of the next closest store.
This closing of stores is not because the company is in financial difficulty.
With fewer stores, we can better support our remaining stores and our customers.
Our stores will continue to offer unique experiences to our customers through our brands and sub-brands and offer the unique styling experiences in our dressing rooms.
Most importantly, our passionate sales associates will continue to bring the brand to life, delivering personalized service that deepens customer connection, and drives long-term loyalty.
Our stores will continue to offer unique experiences.
Our passionate sales associates will continue to bring the brand to life.
I don’t know. It kinda feels like corporate doesn't understand the culture of its own stores. Those two lines could be inserted into any retail company’s “talking points.”
It’s pretty sad.
Information should go out all at once
Not every leader I heard from was upset.
I got a DM from a leader who wasn’t too concerned about this announcement. They thought that the way the company rolled it out was fine.
She grabbed the info and disseminated it to her team. She felt like not every store leader did a good job of broadcasting the information to their employees. Those teams were the ones that were most anxious and upset by the news.
“Most of them agreed that to suppress panic, they were not telling their teams, and that backfired."
There is absolutely merit in this.
Withholding information to suppress panic never works. It only makes matters worse.
Good leaders make you feel seen and cared for no matter what is going on at corporate. There’s a feeling of—we'll get through it together, no matter what.
However, many employees are done with Torrid.
Over it
They’re done with a company that took away their raises right before they went into effect this year. (Yep!) Because tariffs. Wait, no tariffs. Tariffs?
They’re done with seeing the company pour money into influencers and Coachella and social media while the frontline workers barely make a living wage.
They’re done with the prices that the company is asking them to pay for clothing.
They’re done with the styles Torrid is offering.
Seen on Reddit:
“The audacity to NEVER modernize their clothing. Making big girls look like couch cushions.”
“They are going to run us into the ground work-wise, will not compensate us for the uptick in tasking and the amount of customers. They will milk this thing dry, get their bag, and close the doors. Corporate does not care about us. They have added so much tasking since COVID. They have dismantled our bonuses so now they are basically impossible to get.”
“The sad part is I absolutely loved my job. Being able to help others find clothes that they love and fit made me so happy. But once the abuse started and the lack of appreciation began, you burn out fast.”
"‘Right-sizing our stores’ get fcked….”
It’s giving private equity
It sure is.
At its debut, Hot Topic was the owner of Torrid. It made sense. Hot Topic was an alternative mall store. It was for skate kids and music lovers. It was edgy and dark. They sold a lot of black t-shirts and indie pop culture stuff. Torrid was a natural extension of the brand.
Plus-size clothing for fashion-forward goth girls. The first time I saw a Torrid store, I was like, Oh! Cool. Finally.
But then -
Torrid was purchased by Sycamore Partners, a private equity firm, in 2013. Sycamore took the company public in 2021. Private equity firms typically have an investment horizon. They want to make their money back through an IPO or a sale to another company.
Often, the retail company that was purchased ends up needing to raise capital, so it may cut benefits, cut back on staffing, pull back raises, purchase lower-quality items, etc.
The frontline always gets the short end of the stick. These companies always talk about how their store employees are their greatest assets while they take away raises and payroll hours. Then they focus on your metrics and yell at you because your comp numbers are down. Like there’s no correlation between the two.
Honestly, Sycamore Partners kinda sucks.
“Sycamore Partners-owned companies have been fined for a number of health and safety, wage and hour, and environmental violations. While Sycamore Partners’ strategy has led to negative impacts for workers, it has also been ineffective at delivering outsized returns for investors…”
“You are witnessing, in real time, the death of Torrid as a company.” - Reddit comment.
The inside scoop
My DMs were awash with Torrid leaders this week.
Here’s a glimpse.
“Torrid got rid of the assistant store manager (ASM) position a few years ago, and had 3 part-time key holders running a store along with the store manager (SM).
This killed any ability to promote from within, and put the responsibility of the store on people who weren't getting benefits along with an SM.
The key holder role was seen as the hardest to fill even before covid, and to eliminate it in 2023 was absurd. Combined with different sales online over in store, bringing in and then firing a new VP of stores in 2024, it was an absolute crazy mess.
They have also had tons of turnover from long term DMs in the last 18 months, which says a lot. No severance for the stores that have already closed, and no word on which stores will be closing yet.
The pay is also on the lower end of things. I was happy with my time there, though increasingly frustrated with doing so much with less. Losing the ASM role was the final straw for me.”
“The closing of stores I saw coming from the beginning of the year.
No email was sent (about stores closing), no call. An instagram post.
I couldn't believe it. They still haven't provided a list of stores closing.Shortly after all performance reviews and conversations, Torrid sent out an email, postponing raises, due to tariffs and rising costs - couple cent raises. All while doing influencer packages and booths at Coachella.
It raised a lot of frustration, my ASM felt cheated. Many stores lost staff.I love retail and I love my customers, my team ran on creating an unforgettable shopping experience. But when you take away hard earned raises, product and customer perks, you lose your team first then your customers.
No matter how hard you work to bring a team together, frustration is a real thing, and companies don't seem to understand that you can love a brand, love its values, but if you don't "love" your employees back, that culture is lost.
Plus sized women already don't have many safe spaces, and are losing more (now that Torris is) closing stores.”
Not just another retail store
The most wild thing to me about all this is that Torrid has what most brands would absolutely kill for: a die-hard, people-first, supportive community that would do anything for each other. And they’re squandering it away to private equity and influencers.
It’s like the people in the corporate offices have no idea what kind of company they’re running. If they would stop and listen, they would see.
It took me two days to figure it out. C’mon C-suite.
“I didn't have options, and she does. They may be limited, but she has this option, and she has a place to go where she can see fat women celebrating who they are and each other.” - Torrid manager
Everything is a commodity these days. Even plus-size women and their circle of support. It can be bought and sold, cut down and closed, and sold back as business as usual.
They expect us to believe that -
With fewer stores, we can better support our remaining stores and our customers.
Like that makes sense. It doesn’t.
It’s corporate speak that feels like chewing sugary cereal.
“This company was built off of fat girls who finally had a place where they felt like they belonged. They're recruiting those fat girls that shop there to be their employees. And then the way that society has preyed on fat women and made them feel a certain type of way—that they don't deserve love or they only deserve the bare minimum or they don't like our self-confidence out in the world.” A very proud, self-proclaimed “fat chick” told me.
“Then they don’t pay us a living wage.”
Like the privilege of working in the store and being a part of the community is enough.
“We stay because we love our customers and we love each other, but we're not getting that support from the company ever. It feels like we're waiting for the brand to finally just be gone, which is not what I want. Torrid is so much more than a place to buy clothes.”
“Torrid is missing this opportunity to care for this group of people who have never been cared for.”
That. Read that again. It’s incredibly insightful.
Putting employees first could turn a profit
I asked her:
“If Torrid goes away, say they close all the stores, where does this community go?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a look of heartbreak and melancholy.
“Maybe there will be more Juicy Body Goddesses around the country. You should definitely go look at her TikTok because she has a lot of fun in her store!”
Is it time for Torrid’s neglect and bad business decisions to catch up to them? I don’t know. Maybe.
They rose up in the time before the internet and social media. They were a special corner of the mall, which was awash in skinny, white-centric normcore. The Gap, J.Crew, Esprit. Made for preppy, size 6, “all-American” consumers.
Today, there are so many more options.
But what we need, now more than ever, is the human part of the shopping experience, and the Torrid frontline employees have given that to their customers for years without asking anything in return.
They were the ultimate example of pay it forward.
It was hard for me, so I’m going to help you.
Everyone cries in the fitting room, and that’s okay. I got you. You are beautiful. I see you. Embrace who you are and be proud of it.
No matter if you’re 55, going through a divorce, and learning to love yourself.
No matter if you’re 12 and have never found clothes that fit you. We got you.
No matter if you’re a trans woman going through hormone therapy. Let me get you a bra that fits!
Everyone was welcome.
The frontline teams at Torrid made all those people feel special. Made them feel included in a society that told them otherwise. Imagine the emotional labor that takes. Imagine being that support for strangers every day. The amount of focus and energy that requires is immense.
To see that crushed today by fucking private equity is heartbreaking. I’m a cynic, so I’m also like, it figures. I just wish it weren't so. I just wish that retail companies would, for once, put the people first who made them who they are.
If they did, they could even turn a profit. I promise.
And yes, I’m also an optimist at heart. Go figure.
Kit Campoy is an accomplished retail expert and author. She leverages her two decades of leadership experience to inform and inspire.
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Update from an anonymous Torrid leader:
"We did get our annual raises. We got them two weeks later. The raises were “paused” for less than 7 days and then it was announced that they would be reinstated."
I'm SO happy to hear this!
Woof! This is such an incredible needed deep dive! It's emotional and it SHOULD be!
The beauty of the in-person human connection is never more clearly demonstrated and the callousness of corporate more truly shown despicable than the story you outlined here.