Old School's new face

It was eight months late, but the opening of Old School by Steeple People was still a welcome sight for many shoppers missing their beloved thrift shop.

Store manager Joe Partyka said the response since the opening last Sunday has been amazing. "We've had lines of people waiting to get in and record sales overall," he said.

Steeple People, at the corner of Lyndale and Franklin avenues in Minneapolis, closed in March 2017 to make way for an apartment complex.

Business was at record levels in the year before it closed, so board members for the nonprofit affiliated with Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church began to look for a new location.

The new store, with the Old School name, is at 1901 Nicollet Av. in Minneapolis, about half a mile from the former location. It is about the same size as the former shop, but all on one level and minus the creaky steps and the leaky roof.

Large windows cast lots of natural light into the store. The polished concrete floors look as nice as the ones in Target after it remodeled its Nicollet Mall store.

The main attraction is the curated merchandise sold at prices lower than at most Twin Cities thrift shops, especially the for-profit ones.

"Even after having better sales than we ever imagined, the stock is still well-stocked," said Heidi Ritter, president of the board of directors for Old School. "We have a surplus of merchandise already priced, waiting to be put out."

Donations are being accepted at the store during business hours and also from 9 to 11 a.m. Sundays in the church parking lot (look for the van at the back of the lot).

The store is open noon to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. Hours may be extended as traffic patterns are determined. The building has seven free parking spots on the south side of the building along with metered parking in front. For information, call 612-871-8305.

JOHN EWOLDT

As parts of North Carolina and Florida continue to dig out from the destruction from Hurricane Florence, Best Buy Co. said it is paying workers at three of its closed stores for their time doing volunteer work in the community.

More than 200 employees are affected at stores in Wilmington and Morehead City, both in North Carolina, and in Panama City, Fla., the company said. Other employees have been diverted to nearby stores to keep their paychecks coming.

The retailer's decision to pay its hourly workers for community service was heralded by a contingent of cabinet members and elected officials who visited the Wilmington store in mid-October. Among the attendees were U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and three members of North Carolina's Congressional delegation.

Richfield-based Best Buy, the nation's largest consumer electronics company, first decided to offer some monetary support to displaced workers in Puerto Rico last year after Hurricane Maria struck the island, where the company has about 300 employees at stores and a distribution center.

The post-Florence pay was only for employees who volunteered to do cleanup. Those whose homes and lives were too disrupted by the storm to help others were taking paid vacation time, a spokesman said.

These workers were eligible for financial support from a foundation established by Best Buy founder Richard Schulze. Best Buy said it would match employee donations dollar-for-dollar, and was allowing workers to donate hours from their vacation banks to help colleagues dealing with flood damage.

A Best Buy spokesman said Thursday he didn't have details on how much money had been raised or the time-off hours donated. The company also didn't yet know the number of hours people had worked in the community.

The retailer aims to get the North Carolina stores back online in time for the Black Friday day-after-Thanksgiving sale. It's too soon to know when the Panama City location will open.

JACKIE CROSBY

The online company that has rocked the nation's retail stores to the core opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Manhattan less than a month ago, and it's as much a curiosity for shoppers as a shot across the bow to keep competitors guessing.

Amazon.com Inc. calls the new store in the Soho neighborhood Amazon 4-star, and stocks it with top-selling and trending items from its online site that customers have rated with four or more stars.

The store sells a tightly curated selection of goods that range from the everyday to high tech, and just a touch of the eclectic.

It has Roombas and wooden cutting boards, books and Wi-Fi light bulbs, frying pans and Fire TVs. The merchandise is rotated to keep up with customer reviews, which average 4.4 stars.

A visit to the store last week offered up an uneven array of items.

An area labeled "Quirky Kitchen Gifts" offered the most creative offerings, such as a frying pan that turns a couple of cracked eggs and strips of bacon into the face of a dog. The more mundane showed up at a table marked "Trending Around NYC." Here, shoppers could find a Honeywell fan, an Echo Dot portable speaker, and Bob Woodward's book, "Fear," among the items

A woman who said she was from Argentina hugged a small stuffed elephant and cooed, "Ooh, so cute!" and headed toward the cashier.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers Marcus Lloyd and R'el Dade walked out empty-handed.

"I didn't really see anything that I couldn't find in another store," said Dade, 27. "And on the website you can type anything you want in that search bar."

The cashier said the store is popular among international shoppers who don't get Amazon Prime's two-day shipping guarantee. While Amazon 4-star doesn't ship out online orders, customers who are able can return items here that they purchased online.

Amazon has taken its digital brand offline before, including several cashier-less Amazon Go stores in Seattle and Chicago, Amazon book stores and pop-up stores. An Amazon "Treasure Truck" store-on-wheels showed up in downtown Minneapolis in September 2017.

JACKIE CROSBY

John Ewoldt • 612-673-7633 Jackie Crosby • 612-673-7335