Rye, NY-based Lillian Vernon felt a “noticeable impact” on phone orders from the northeast on Friday thanks to the blackout.
Company spokesman David Hochberg chalked it up that the fact “people either had no power or because of the distraction factor. They’re glued to their TV sets and not ordering.”
The catalog also felt a modest impact on online orders. “A lot of our customers are busy working women and do most of their online shopping at lunchtime,” he said. “So because this happened at the end of the day [Thursday] it didn’t affect us much.”
“The good news for catalogers,” he added, “is this is not our peak season, so if something like this has to happen, this is a good time. There’s no holidays looming. It’s a quiet time.”
At the Rye, NY corporate headquarters, power came back up in the middle of the night and most employees made it into work on Friday. About a dozen employees who live in Manhattan carpooled home on Thursday night, but couldn’t make it back to work Friday because the Metro North commuter trains were not running.
On the brick and mortar side, two of the company’s 13 outlet stores — in Lake George and Riverhead, NY — had to close when the power went out on Thursday. They opened later than usual on Friday.
The power outage was not felt in Virginia Beach, where the company’s fulfillment operations are centered.
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