Formal wear sales in steep decline as COVID accelerates business casual trend

by Kaleb Roedel, NNBW

RENO, Nev. — In the early 2000s, a few years after springing out of Silicon Valley, tech startup Google wrote a “10 things we know to be true” manifesto.

One of the company’s core principles argued, “You can be serious without a suit.”

That statement may never ring truer.

Over the past 20 years, office dress codes have been getting more and more relaxed, spurred in part by the influx of millennials in the workforce and companies — especially in the tech industry — embracing the concept of modern workplace culture.

Gone are casual Fridays; in are casual workweeks.

“In the early Silicon Valley days, tech culture was created as counterculture against the Wall Street suits,” Daniel Price, CEO of Reno-based IoT company Ioterra, said in a video interview with the NNBW. “And that sort of promulgated throughout the last couple decades. I think western tech culture kind of defined itself as, ‘you don’t have to dress up and be uncomfortable at work.’”

Flash forward to 2020, and the coronavirus pandemic has only accelerated the casualness of business wear.

After the COVID crisis shut down office spaces across the country — some temporarily, others for good — it created a boom of business being done from the comfort of one’s couch, kitchen or home office.

Read the entire article in the NNBW: https://www.nnbw.com/news/taking-the-suit-from-c-suite-formal-wear-sales-in-steep-decline-as-covid-accelerates-business-casual-trend/