Where Profit Comes Not In Dollars

The New York Times:

At a small high-end children’s clothing and toy store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, shirts for infants go for as much as $40 and sweaters for toddlers to first graders cost $40 to $70.

But many parents in the area are well off and accustomed to paying those prices, according to the store’s operator, Marjorie Stern.

That gives her high hopes that this seven-month-old shop will thrive, though not for her profit. The store, A Time for Children, on Amsterdam Avenue near 84th Street, is owned by a family foundation that Stern and her husband, Michael, established two decades ago to help disadvantaged children.

All of the store’s after-tax revenue goes to Children’s Aid, and all of its employees, except for two managers and a training assistant, are 16- to 20-year-olds referred for part-time work by the agency. They generally work four-month stints of 12 to 15 hours a week, earning $8 an hour, while attending high school in most cases, or college in a few.

Stern aims to expose the store’s young employees to career opportunities in the retail world. To make the experience more than “just standing in the store and selling,” she said, she seeks to acquaint them with tasks like selecting and effectively displaying merchandise.

“She took five or six of us to a toy trade show to learn the buying aspect,” one of the employees, Charline Mitchell, 18, said recently. “It helped me to see how we get things into the store and how to buy what’s appropriate for the store.”

C. Warren Moses, the chief executive of the Children’s Aid Society, said the store was an “incredible, creative use of philanthropic dollars.”

At the store, another employee, Stanley Dye, 20, of the Bronx, said he was studying for an associate’s degree in business administration at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. His experience at the store, he said, along with a job and internships he has had at a publishing house and other companies, will “help me decide what I’ll want to do.”

Photo by Ruby Washington.

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