A Retailer, Eileen Fisher, Shakes Off Storm’s Body Blows and Reopens

And it was.

All but one of the company’s 58 stores are open, and retailers like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s have Ms. Fisher’s latest designs on their racks. On a recent afternoon, aside from its cramped quarters, there was no sign of the storm on the second floor of the Eileen Fisher headquarters here, 20 miles north of Manhattan. Phones were ringing, online orders were being processed and Ms. Fisher was at her desk.

But step downstairs, where work crews were sawing off the bottom part of walls, removing mold-ridden desks and pulling up drenched carpet, and the magnitude of the last month’s miracle was hard to dismiss.

“It was a mess,” Ms. Fisher said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Hurricane Sandy hurt retailers large and small. It closed airports, ports and roads, jamming merchandise at critical shipping times. More than a third of stores in the Northeast closed for at least a day, according to the research firm RetailNext. Macy’s has said that the storm delayed sales. Target said November started off choppily, and a Kohl’s store in Brooklyn will be closed at least through January.

For Eileen Fisher, started by Ms. Fisher in 1984, the storm was the biggest blow to operations ever. It decimated a store here and closed her headquarters, her Manhattan design center and her warehouse in Secaucus, N.J. For smaller retailers — Eileen Fisher expects about $350 million in revenue this year — a week or two of closed offices, stores and warehouses in early November could be ruinous.

Recovery was both an urgent and a daunting task. A broad insurance policy helped a lot. So did some planning and a good amount of luck. As did an almost out-of-body detachment on executives’ parts to see past the emotion of sewage-soaked shirts and stained rolls of fabric to the prize of reopening a ravaged business.

Even the cash in the register at the Irvington store had to be taken home and blown dry. Almost $1.5 million, 12 Dumpsters and eight moving-truck-size mobile storage units of damaged goods later, Eileen Fisher was — for the most part — back.

“It was just stuff,” Ms. Fisher said.

Perils of a New Location

Ms. Fisher moved her headquarters to Irvington 20 years ago, choosing a brick building that was just a couple of yards from the Hudson River. It reminded her of the TriBeCa location where she had started the business, she said, and who doesn’t get inspiration from water?

Now that inspiration had become a liability. On a recent sunny day, the Hudson seemed calm and threatless, a cool gray-brown river about 10 feet below its banks. But on the night of the storm, the river rose over a barrier and stampeded north, churning through buildings “like a washing machine,” said Peter Joslin, the company’s facilities manager.

Mr. Joslin is from the Midwest, and he’s seen his fair share of river flooding, including last year, when a corner of the building took on water during Hurricane Irene.

In the week before Sandy hit on Monday, Oct. 29, he was watching the weather forecasts, but, as he says, “we’re pretty laid back down here.”

Then, on the Friday before the storm, he received an e-mail from his predecessor in the job. It contained just four words: “Get out them sandbags.”

“That started to freak me out,” Mr. Joslin said.

He called the owner of a remediation company that had done work for Eileen Fisher in the past and obtained a promise that if anything went wrong, the company would be on site within two hours. He then called a moving company to see if it could remove some important files and other valuables, like $20,000 copiers. It was already booked.

Employees worked through the weekend, piling sandbags three high along the building, encasing the second floor of headquarters in plastic in case the roof leaked and caulking windows. The storm struck Monday night.

Assessing the Damage

Field Fisher and Osborne Clarke in Talks Over Potential �200 Million Merger

Field Fisher Waterhouse and Osborne Clarke are in early-stage talks about a potential combination that could create a merged firm with revenues of nearly £200 million, Legal Week can reveal.

News of the discussions comes weeks after Field Fisher's merger talks with LG were called off in June.

If the union goes ahead, the tie-up would create a U.K. top 20 firm with combined revenues of around £195 million, based on the two outfits' 2011-12 results.

The firms also posted similar profits per equity partner figures last year, with Osborne Clarke coming in at £406,000, while Field Fisher partners took home an average of £410,000 following a drop of nearly 20 percent.

Separately, it has emerged that Field Fisher managing partner Matthew Lohn has been signed off sick from the firm since the talks with LG ended, with technology and outsourcing head Michael Chissick filling in on an interim basis.

Lohn was elected as managing partner in October following a contested vote that also saw Chissick put himself forward.

It is understood that Mark Abell, the chairman of the firm's European franchising network and a senior partner within the firm, is also playing a leading role in the Osborne Clarke talks.

In a statement, Field Fisher said: "It is well known that merger is on Field Fisher Waterhouse's agenda as potentially one way of achieving our ambitious growth plans and strategic objectives. This means that like many in the mid-market we have been speaking to a number of firms to explore the benefits that such a merger would bring.

"We will not be commenting on individual talks unless they reach an appropriate stage."

Separately, Field Fisher chief operating officer Charlie Keeling, who was appointed to the role in November, is leaving the firm to join Clyde & Co. You must be signed in to comment on an article