Allbirds closes last brick-and-mortar store in San Francisco

If the last San Francisco Allbirds store closed its doors and no one was around to hear it close, did it make a sound?

Allbirds, the shoe brand that was once an icon of mid-2010s San Francisco tech, will close nearly all of its physical stores by the end of February. Only two outlet stores in the U.S. and two full-price stores in London remain.

“This is an important step for Allbirds as we aim for profitable growth based on our turnaround strategy,” Allbirds CEO Joe Bernacchio said in a statement. “We have opportunistically downsized our brick-and-mortar portfolio over the past two years. We are taking steps to reduce costs and support the long-term health of our business by exiting these remaining unprofitable doors.”

The typical Allbirds wearer knows that this kind of corporate talk is a thinly veiled way of conveying that the company’s current financial outlook is not good.

Allbirds was founded in San Francisco in 2015 and quickly became the “it” shoe among employees at startups (even the staff at TechCrunch once received a branded gray Allbirds shoe as a company swag. Is the current lack of matching shoes a sign of a recession?).

The shoe is certainly very comfortable, but it’s ugly in a way that only unstylish techies would want (although the white wool runners are cool in a minimalist sense). It’s similar to Skechers, which emphasizes comfort above all else, but at a higher price point. Also, unlike Skechers, Allbirds did not use the one and only Martha Stewart to create a line of shoes.

Like the company its customers likely work for, Allbirds raised enough venture capital to secure an inflated unicorn valuation, but failed to go public in 2021. The company’s market cap currently stands at about $32 million, and its stock price hovers around just a few dollars per share, but at least the Nasdaq ticker symbol is a very cool $BIRD.

This isn’t the end of an era for Allbirds. This shoe is also available online and, although expensive, is a really good shoe. But perhaps this marks the end of the days when working in the tech industry seemed like a ticket to lifelong stability. Right now, your company may only be able to afford a branded Patagonia vest if you’re working on AI, and even then you’re suffering from an undercurrent of fear that the AI ​​bubble will burst.

Perhaps this anxiety is fueling the next era of Silicon Valley style, where everything needs to be as efficient as possible. Technicians now wear Oura rings to track biometric data, record macros on MyFitnessPal, and eat Sweetgreen’s “Power Max” protein bowls, which contain over 100 grams of protein.

With that in mind, it’s no wonder people feel nostalgic about 2016.