Popular GA Kids Apparel Retailer To Close 150 Stores, Cut 300 Jobs

ATLANTA, GA — Carter's, the popular baby-apparel retailer headquartered in Atlanta, on Monday announced it will close about 150 stores and cut about 300 jobs due to higher tariff costs and other factors.

The beloved retailer, which also operates OshKosh B'gosh, joins Amazon in slashing jobs amid an ever-changing economy. Carter's Simple Joy brand is sold through Amazon, which on Tuesday announced it was cutting jobs due to artificial intelligence effects.

“Our third quarter performance reflected continued improvement in U.S. retail business demand as we achieved positive comparable sales and improved pricing for the second consecutive quarter,” Carter's CEO and President Douglas C. Palladini said in a quarterly report. “However, elevated product costs, in part due to the impact of higher tariffs, as well as additional investment, weighed meaningfully on our profitability."

President Donald Trump first initiated tariffs - taxes imposed on imported goods - against Mexico, China and Canada days after his second-term inauguration earlier in the year. Steel, aluminum and foods were among impacted goods.

Customers have experienced an 8.99 percent increase in apparel costs due to the tariffs, the Tax Foundation reported on Oct. 21.

Carter's reported a 62.2 percent dive in operating income, from $77 million in the third quarter of Fiscal Year 2024 to $29.1 million in this year's third quarter.

While Carter's did not release a list of impacted store locations, the company said about 150 stores will shut down once their leases expire in a span of three years. Previously, Carter's planned to shutter 100 stores in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

Combined, the impacted stores represent about $110 million in annual net sales on a yearly basis, Carter's said.

By the end of the year, the company said it will have dwindled its office-based roles by 15 percent, or about 300 positions. In doing so, Carter's hopes to record annualized savings of about $35 million in early 2026. Severance will be offered.

Additionally, Carter's is aiming to minimize its yearly spending by more than $10 million.

Carter's operates more than 1,000 stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. In Georgia, 23 stores are Carter's and 13 stores are OshKosh B'gosh.

"The Administration has implemented significant new tariffs on products imported into the United States from a wide range of countries. These additional tariffs have begun to add substantially to the approximately $110 million in duties on imported product paid by the Company (Carter's) in fiscal 2024," Carter's said in its report.

"The Company estimates that Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and India will collectively represent approximately 75%, and China less than 3%, of its product sourcing spend in fiscal year 2025. The Company has estimated the gross pre-tax earnings impact of additional import duties to be approximately $200 million to $250 million on an annualized basis. Over time, the Company intends to partially offset these additional costs through a combination of changes to its product assortments, cost sharing with its vendor partners, changes to the mix of its production by country and raising prices to end consumers and its wholesale customers. In the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025, the Company anticipates a net adverse impact to pre-tax income of approximately $25 million to $35 million related to additional tariffs."

Trump is slated to meet with China's President Xi Jinping on Thursday to talk tariffs among other topics.

Tariff Impact Expands Beyond Carter's

Carter's is one of the latest retail giants to drop jobs.

Amazon, where Carter's Simple Joy is available, will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence while cutting costs elsewhere.

Teams and individuals impacted by the job cuts will be notified on Tuesday. Most workers will be given 90 days to look for a new position internally, Beth Galetti, senior vice president of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, wrote in a letter to employees on Tuesday. Those who can't find a new role at the company or who opt not to look for one will be provided transitional support including severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits.

Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of about 1.56 million. The cuts announced Tuesday amount to about a 4 percent reduction in its corporate workforce.

The cuts announced Tuesday suggests Amazon is still trying to get the size of its workforce right and it may not be over. It was the biggest culling at Amazon since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs. Those cuts came in waves, with 9,000 jobs trimmed in March of that year, and another 18,000 employees two months later. Amazon has not said if more job cuts are on the way.

Many retailers are pulling back on seasonal hiring this year due to uncertainty over the U.S. economy and tariffs. Amazon Inc. said this month, however, that it would hire 250,000 seasonal workers, the same as last year's holiday season.

The Associated Press contributed reporting and writing.

Patch is working to learn where the Carter's closures will take place.