J.Jill has come a long way in the short time since the Quincy-based retailer flirted with bankruptcy, and the company’s stock price shows it.
To some extent, the seller of women’s apparel owes its recovery to the economic rebound that followed the shutdowns early in the pandemic. But there’s a longer-term shift going on, much of it attributable to chief executive Claire Spofford, who rejoined the business last February.
“I was pretty familiar with the brand,” said Spofford, who had been chief marketing officer at J.Jill a decade ago. “Honestly, that was one of the reasons I came back. I knew there was a lot of potential.”
Investors seem to be seeing that potential, too: The stock price has roughly quadrupled in value since Spofford rejoined J.Jill from Cornerstone Brands, taking over for board member and interim chief Jim Scully. The shares now trade around $15, compared to less than $4 last February. The company expects sales will be up at least 35 percent for the 2021 fiscal year, exceeding $580 million. That represents a solid recovery from the first year of the pandemic, but is still well short of 2019 levels, when J.Jill’s topline approached $700 million. J.Jill finished the third quarter with $18 million in cash, twice as much as in 2020.
Spofford said she tried at the get-go to fix some underlying issues. That included getting a better handle on excess inventory, closing some stores with unfavorable leases, and moving fewer clothes at markdown prices — even if the changes led to a short-term hit to revenue. The company also restructured debt with its lenders the summer before she joined, creating some breathing room.
Now, Spofford said, J.Jill is ready to think about expanding again, including with new brick-and-mortar locations. Roughly half of its revenue comes from its 260 stores, with online sales providing the rest.
Navigating the pandemic hasn’t always been easy. One of the biggest hurdles: getting goods from overseas factories to the main warehouse in Tilton, N.H. Supply chain issues have affected the dependability of cargo ship deliveries, so J.Jill has turned to air shipments when necessary, a more expensive approach. Spofford said her team constantly makes adjustments to keep up with the rapidly changing supply chain.
“I’m not smart enough to do everything and to make all of the decisions, and the best thing I can do is to . . . have the right team in place,” Spofford said. “This environment has been challenging, COVID notwithstanding, [but] the team has done a really good job of working together and figuring stuff out.”
Back to the private side of things
Lauren Liss has made a career out of environmental and real estate law, moving with ease between the public sector and the private one.
Now, the former chief executive of MassDevelopment is back on the private sector side, after joining Greenberg Traurig’s 80-attorney Boston office last week as senior counsel. Liss had previously worked at Rubin and Rudman before taking the top job at MassDevelopment in 2017. She opted not to stay once her three-year term was up. (Eventually, the Baker administration tapped Dan Rivera, then the mayor of Lawrence, to replace her.)
She kept active in various board roles during the past year, including at real estate trade group NAIOP Massachusetts and economic development agency MassEcon.
Greenberg Traurig, with its 2,300 lawyers around the world, happens to be much bigger than her last law firm.
“Over the years, I had gotten to know a lot of the lawyers from Greenberg Traurig, [by] working with them and sometimes working on the other side of cases,” Liss said. “While it’s a national firm, even a global firm, the attorneys in Boston really make it feel like it’s a Boston [focused], plugged-in firm, which is a perfect place for me.”
Big gift to help Center for the Blind
The main building at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton has a new name, thanks to a deep-pocketed and deep-hearted donor.
Businessman Gordon Gund, a previous owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and the San Jose Sharks, has given $1.5 million to help kick off the Carroll Center’s first comprehensive fund-raising campaign in its 85-year history. In return, Carroll renamed its main building the Lulie Gund Center for Vision Rehabilitation, after Gordon’s late wife.
The building’s dedication in December also served as the family’s first gathering to celebrate Lulie Gund’s life since her death in March 2020, early in the pandemic, Carroll chief executive Greg Donnelly said. The event served as a both a memorial service and a building dedication.
Gordon Gund, who has homes in New Jersey and Nantucket, lost his sight in the 1970s to retinitis pigmentosa. He and his wife became major funders of philanthropic efforts to help the blind, including by launching the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Gordon Gund hoped the gift would open up doors to other potential donors; judging from the early returns, Donnelly said the donation is working as intended.
Big push for public bank
Is momentum growing for a bill that would create a state-owned bank?
The various advocates and politicians who joined a virtual press conference last Thursday certainly hope so.
Supporters made one final push before what’s known as “Joint Rule 10 Day” this Wednesday. That’s the deadline for when legislative committees are supposed to decide which bills they’ll support and which ones they’ll send off to a “study,” as they say on Beacon Hill. (Committee chairs can get around this deadline by granting themselves extensions.) The bank bill in question is before the financial services committee.
The measure would set aside $200 million over four years to launch the public bank, to help provide low-cost loans to municipalities, small businesses, farmers, and certain nonprofits. Three of the bill’s primary sponsors ― Senator Jamie Eldridge and Representatives Mike Connolly and Nika Elugardo — participated in the press event, as did congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. The list of speakers ranged from Jen Faigel, who runs CommonWealth Kitchen in Dorchester, to Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, head of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, to Nicole Obi, the new chief executive of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts.
For Elugardo, this bill is personal. She said her mentor, politician and activist Mel King, was the first person to endorse her three years ago.
Then he had a request, as Elugardo recalls: “The next thing out of his mouth was, ‘You’re going to file a public bank bill, right?”
A call on the Hall
Retired Red Sox slugger David Ortiz apparently wasn’t sure he would make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame last week.
But Joe Baerlein, a communications adviser to Big Papi, made the right call. After all, as one of Boston’s foremost experts on statewide ballot questions, Baerlein knows a thing or two about counting votes. (Baerlein worked with Peter Brown to first represent Ortiz in 2019, as Ortiz emerged following three months of rehab after he was shot in the Dominican Republic.)
So Baerlein reached out to Ortiz last week just before this round’s final tally of Hall of Fame votes from sportswriters was announced.
“He said, ‘I’ve got an at-bat, and I don’t know what they’re going to throw me,’” Baerlein said later. “I said, ‘David, you’re going to be in.’”
Sure enough, Baerlein’s prediction was good: Ortiz ended up securing nearly 78 percent of the votes, clearing the 75-percent hurdle to get to Cooperstown.
Baerlein said he texted Ortiz the next day: “I just said, you’re a Hall of Famer, man. Congrats. And he said, ‘Thanks, bro.’”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.