NYC NOW - What Saks’ Bankruptcy Says About NYC Business Right Now

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Saks Global, the parent company of Saks 5th Avenue filed for bankruptcy this month. Janae and producer Iru head up to 5th Av. to check on the iconic NYC department store, and WNYC’s Ryan Kailath breaks down why this isn’t the kind of bankruptcy that leads to a liquidation sale but still flashes a warning sign for NYC businesses. Plus, where's all this snow going? Sanitation Department Deputy Joshua Commissioner gives us a peak into the system.

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre. If you've been out in New York this week, you know the snow is not melting. We'll be getting into what the city is doing about that in this episode. But first, let's talk about Sacks Baby. A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in the newsroom looking around at what's been going on in New York City, and one headline jumped out at me. Sacks Fifth Avenue had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Now, I do buy some of my clothes from Sacks off Fifth. That's the outlet store. But still, Fifth Avenue is in the name. And when I think about Sacks, I think about New York City. And this is a tough moment for New York's businesses. The city keeps track of this kind of stuff. And the latest numbers show that last spring, about 3,500 new businesses opened across New York City.

But roughly 8,400 shut down. If you do to math, that's the weakest stretch for business growth, the city's seen in five years. So when an iconic store like Sacks files for bankruptcy, it's not just about one store. It raises a bigger question. What does it mean when even legacy, luxury brands, are under financial pressure in New York?

And is this an outlier or not? To see what this looks like on the ground, I went down to Fifth Avenue with my producer Eero. It's cold out here. y'all. My phone doesn't even recognize my face. Feels like eight degrees. It was the middle of the day on a Tuesday in January and y'all it was cold. But people still shopping. See a Louis Vuitton bag? That's an Eritzia bag and that's the wind. Lots of bags but while I was standing in front of sacks I didn't see any bags from that store. So I asked some shoppers what they'd been hearing.

Did you know that sex filed for bankruptcy? Yes. Yeah? Were you surprised by it? No. Why not? How many people are really talking about, like, going to sacks? Like, who's excited about going to sacks and shopping?

And who can afford it, right? That's Kieran Chopra. She said she was out admiring the window displays, but prefers to shop at smaller indie brands. Nobody's going to department stores. When was the last time you went to department store to shop? The Sacks Off Fifth Outlet. I can't say that maybe a couple months ago, but I was out of time.

Fair. Jody Kaufman, who also stopped to chat, says she remembers coming to Sacks as a young girl. I'm a born New Yorker, and I remember the big treat of going to Sacks. I was a little girl, and my mom got me a camel hair coat. It was such a big thing because we were not rich, so I'm sorry to see it go. Yeah. Do you remember any other department stores that used to be on Fifth Avenue? Oh, yes, Lord and Taylor.

I think my mom even got haircuts here. Oh, awesome. Maybe she had very curly hair. For a lot of New Yorkers, SACS isn't just a store. It's tied up in memories like this one. And to be clear, SACS isn't closing its doors, not yet, at least. The company has filed for bankruptcy as it tries to reorganize its debt. And that's where WMYC reporter Ryan Kylath comes in.

Ryan was at the Fifth Avenue flagship the day they filed for bankruptcy because he had to see for himself. But Ryan, I understand that you were there before the news even dropped, right? Yeah, you know, I'm the arts and culture reporter here, but I spent most of my career as a business and economics reporter. So I still read a lot of that stuff. And if you read the business press, this has been rumored for a month longer that this might be coming. So I was kind of looking ahead of the news to be like, oh, let's go see what it's like. I'd seen some comments on social media. Oh, maybe people were getting good sales, et cetera.

So I went to check it out. And it was a Tuesday afternoon and it was freezing out. So it was like not that many people, but I think a normal amount given that. And there were sale signs everywhere. Wow. So I saw it all. I was in the women's lingerie department and the men's streetwear department the whole way down. So I was like, great.

My hunch was correct. My story is perfect. These discounts. It's a bankruptcy fire sale. But then everybody I talked to, I took like three different sales. They were like, no, that's just the normal, like, after Christmas clearance sale. And then that night they filed for bankruptcy. So this has got nothing to do with the bankruptcy, which makes sense.

I did run into a woman who was doing the same thing as me. Tanya Perkins was her name. She was like, yeah, I work nearby, so I come on my lunch break a lot. And I just do all my favorite sections really quick to see what's going on. I asked her if she was even aware of this. And she was like, oh, bankrupt. No, I think, no, I didn't really know. that was happening. So Tanya might be back in the store now that it's announced. Yeah. And let's talk

about the type of bankruptcy in which they filed. Yeah. So the two big kinds, this was chapter 11. So this is the kind where you owe a bunch of money, but you want to stay in business. Just like if your friend owes you a lot of money and they can't pay you back, you might say, well, what can you do for me? Even if you can't pay back the whole amount, that's what Sacks is doing with all of its creditors. The biggest one, if I remember right is Chanel, who they owe over $100 million to. Yikes. Chanel just stopped shipping inventory to SACs because they were not getting paid for the stuff they had shipped before. So a lot of their suppliers had been cutting them off. There were signs that this was going to spiral. You know, if you don't have inventory,

then you can't make money. Vicious cycle. So people have seen this coming for a while. All right. So no liquidation sale. And sex isn't looking like a company in trouble when you're in the building. So what's going on? Yeah. It's like I said, it's been coming for a while and the big signal was last year. So SACS was in debt like a lot of these big department stores, which for obvious reasons are not doing so well, e-commerce, the future has happened. A lot of them take on, have taken on a lot of debt. SACS is no exception. And then December 24, so a little over a year ago. They spent, I think, about $2.2 billion in debt by Neiman Marcus. And that's the point where a lot of financial watchers were like, oh, we might be seeing something in about a year because that's a lot of debt to take on.

And that's what I was going to ask. Sacks isn't going out of business right now, but is this a sign that they may be going out of business soon? Probably not because they're so iconic, but we will probably see some changes. So I'm guessing that that's going to look like store closures. They're not going to close flagship Fifth Avenue, you know, tourists across from Rock Center. That's the whole brand. But they're going to close my outlet store, Sacks off Fifth. They might close the Sacks off Fifth. And, you know, they have stores, obviously, all over the country. They own Niemann-Marcus. They own Bergdorf.

So I bet middle of the country, other places, we're going to see probably some store closures. Who knows, maybe even desperate straits, they might close one of the brands completely. I was just looking at up. What they do have is a huge real estate portfolio. And that's kind of an asset that they can borrow against and is helping subsidize other parts of the business that are losing. So if they start to sell some of that real estate, that might help. And that's where we might see some of those store closures come from. And one could only hope that the sex right here on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan will be the absolute last one.

Yeah, yeah. That'll be like the Macy's flagship on 34th. Yeah. If that one goes, then they're gone. You know, bankruptcy aside, after Christmas sale, what did you get? Oh, I got nothing. What? You go into Sacks and you didn't get anything?

I went to the Barney's closeout sale because they did have that kind of fire sale situation, and I do miss that. But no, I'm not a department store guy. I'm a boutiques man. Okay. That tracks. Yeah, Sacks is such an iconic department store like you mentioned. But I want to talk about the state of New York City businesses because even though Sacks is still here, at least for now, you know, other Fifth Avenue flagships. doors like Barneys, Henri Bindle, they have closed their doors. I'm wondering if people are

shopping less in general or, you know, is rent just going up? Yeah. There's like been this explosion of thrift, and by that I mean New York City, fancy, vintage consignment thrift. But there's been an explosion of them in my neighborhood on the Lower East Side, almost like a new little vintage district popping up. So I think you see, again, a lot of more of that like boutique. We're going to call it Thrift, but everything's $100 type stuff. That is actually doing pretty well because they're taking the depop or the grailed model and putting it in a store. And as we know, like the Gen Zs and Gen Alpha's, they're starved for authentic experiences. They've lived their whole lives online. They like going to a store and seeing things and meeting people and being out in the world. So that, again, like boutique thing is doing well. But the broad for the rest of the economy, the rest of consumers, the department stores, the way we've thought. of people shopping for clothes across the country for decades now, that's the one that's struggling. Okay, Ryan, as we wrap up our conversation, just one final question for you. As consumers, what should we be looking out for, you know, not just with sex, but with some of our other

favorite department stores across the city? Yeah. I mean, it's tough because every business is so different. But thinking about those big, iconic New York City style businesses, you know, we had another signal just this week when Nathan's famous, Nathan's famous hot dogs just sold to Smithfield, which is a huge agricultural corporation actually owned by a Chinese conglomerate. Now, that's probably a happy outcome for Nathan's business owners, for the shareholders. They were having a tough time, a lot of beef inflation hitting their costs. We'll see how happy that is for the hot dog eaters of the city like myself. Yeah.

But yeah, every business is so different. It's tough to say. And so Sacks, you know, they might like it if they could have an exit. But right now, their plan is very different. It's just see what we can pay back and keep the business going. Yeah. Maybe they can get a hot dog stand in the store. Who knows?

That's WMYC's Ryan Kailat. Ryan, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Stick around after the break for today's New York City News. And also, what the city is doing is. doing about all this snow. Welcome back to NYC Now. I'm Junae Pierre.

I hope you're staying warm this week. As you know, most parts of the tri-state area, including much of New York City, picked up around a foot of snow and sleet this past weekend. I got to be honest, I did go out for a bit in it, and it was kind of fun. I made a snow angel, had a snowball fight, you know, the usual.

It was the most amount of snow, though, New York City has received in just about four years. New York City public schools are back open for in-person learning, and the snow is done falling, but it's just sitting all over the city. There's a lot of snow out there, right? I mean, 12 to 15 inches across the city produces those huge ridges. That's Joshua Goodman. He's the deputy commissioner of the city sanitation department. And they've been out there cleaning the snow and ice. There's 6,000 miles of street and highway. There's 100,000 crosswalks. There's 10,000 bus stops. All of that is public response. To tackle all that public responsibility, the city has about 2,600 sanitation workers on 12-hour shifts, repeatedly.

That's 2,600 working overnight and another 2,600 working during the day. On top of that, DSNY has 500 to 600 hourly workers coming in to help every day. Goodman says these workers are first breaking up the big snow ridges along the curb and taking all of that snow out to what they call approved melting locations. And after the snow gets there, we'll be putting the snow piles into, I guess you'd call them sort of giant jacuzis, our snow melters that melt about 120 tons an hour. And all that melt heads into New York City sewers. Now, Deputy Commissioner Goodman says that the streets and highways, they're getting cleared, but bike lanes, yeah, they need some extra help. If you are someone who uses a bicycle to go to work or who, in the case of delivery personnel,

uses the bike lanes to do their work, we know that there is still somewhere to do. In a car lane, the cars actually do some of the work for us. The big heavy car tires and truck tires pushed snow out of the way. Bikes don't do that. Temperatures are forecast to stay bitterly cold all the way through next Wednesday, which means the snow and ice, it won't be melting on its own. So because of this bitter cold that has followed the snow, we are going to need to continue to re-address the bike lanes because everything that lays in them is, Staying. Plus, there are some early forecasts that are calling for more snow this coming weekend. This is going to add some strain on sanitation workers who often work overtime for snowstorms.

That threat of snow this weekend is exactly why we are doing the hauling and melting operation this year. We really haven't done that in several years, setting up those snow jacuzis. But with more snow coming on top of what's already out there, we've got to get those streets clear. He says New York's strongest are well prepared. We say that the snow is our Super Bowl. Sometimes we like to joke that this is a snow clearing agency that picks up the garbage to keep busy in the summertime. We prepare for winter all year long. Dear listener, if you want to help out with shoveling snow and make a little extra dough, the city is hiring. Commissioner Goodman says DSNY wants people in good enough shape to do some manual labor. But what you do on your own time, that's your business.

Starts at just over $19 an hour. You can sign up at nyc.gov slash snow. That's Joshua Goodman. Deputy Commissioner of the City's Sanitation Department. Before we go, here's what else is happening in New York City. Mayor Zora Mundani and Council Speaker Julie Menon have parted ways on one affordable housing measure. Mumdani campaigned in support of the Council-backed Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or Copa. It would allow nonprofits and early opportunity to buy when certain affordable housing properties go on the market.

Former Mayor Eric Adams vetoed the measure in which, one of his last acts in office. Now, barring some change, his veto will stand. Speaker Menin's office says the council is only willing to attempt to override vetoes where there's a supermajority of support. The deadline for attempting an override is Thursday. Construction on the $16 billion gateway tunnel project under the Hudson River could come to a halt next Friday. That's when the project is expected to run out of money. The Trump administration paused all federal funding for the work back in October. And New York City Ferry Service was still suspended Wednesday morning because of ice in the

Hudson and East Rivers. The boat operators say they're continuing to monitor conditions and they're preparing the fleet to resume service when things improve. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Jenei Pierre. We'll be back in your feeds on Friday. In the meantime, let us know what's on your mind. Hit us up at NYC now at WNYC.org.