The CEO of Cotopaxi, a popular outdoor apparel and gear brand, has announced that he will be closing the company’s only San Fransisco store due to the overwhelming threat of “organized theft rings” in the city.
CEO Davis Smith announced on LinkedIn on Wednesday that after just one year of being located in San Fransisco, the Cotopaxi store is being forced to shut its doors.
Smith refers to crime-ridden, Democrat-run San Fransisco as a “city of chaos,” saying that “streets and parks are overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness,” a problem that law enforcement and local leadership “enable through inaction.”
The CEO recalls that within the store’s first week of being open, their “windows were smashed and thousands of dollars of product was stolen.” This happened four more times before they eventually replaced the window with plywood, then a metal security gate.
“Our store is hit by organized theft rings several times per week,” reported Smith. “Our team is terrified. They feel unsafe. Security guards don’t help because these theft rings know that security guards won’t/can’t stop them.”
“It’s impossible for a retail store to operate in these circumstances, especially when cities refuse to take any action (despite us paying taxes well above any other state we operate in),” Smith wrote, adding, “The city recently announced a reduction of police presence in this neighborhood, despite mass-scale crime.”
Smith also recounts instances of run-ins with drug addicts in the streets of the city, and crimes he has personally been the victim of.
“Last time my wife and I went in 2020, a drugged up person ran up to my wife’s face and started screaming some of the most obscene things I’ve ever heard. She was terrified. During a previous trip, my rental car was broken into and
everything was stolen out of our trunk. When calling the police to report the theft, they let us know this happens hundreds of times per day in the city and said it was our own fault for parking in the street.”
He concluded his message by saying,
“I grew up in Latin America and spent much of my adult life there, and I never felt this unsafe there.
Something has to change in San Francisco.”