retail

Neiman Marcus Plans New Cusp Stores

WWD has a piece on the new move by Neiman Marcus Group to capture a younger demographic. Their new Cusp stores are smaller, hipper stores designed to lure those who might regard the traditional Neiman's as a bit staid.
The four pilot cusp stores will be launched in Tyson's Corner in McLean, Va., Century City in Los Angeles, Georgetown and an unnamed location to be determined later. Cusp will have a more contemporary look and feel with fashion, accessories, beauty products and CDs and books. The article says that the stores will be decorated with a mixture of flea-market finds and natural elements (hmm, sounds like someone's been checking out Anthropologie). The Cusp stores won't be branded with the Neiman Marcus name but you can use your Neiman's card there and the idea behind the store is to offer Neiman's signature service and luxury but with a fresher style.

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Tags: cusp, fashion, merchandising, neiman marcus, NeimanMarcus, retail

U.S. Airport Shops Go Posh

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Wings

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal covered the high end shopping in airports both in the U.S. and abroad. Brands like Prada, Louis Vuitton, Sephora and Versace have stores in airports.%uFFFD While foreign airports have often ample shopping, the U.S. has been slow to catch up because U.S. shoppers haven't really expressed a big interest in airport shopping. But the trend is shifting, in May, French jeweler Cartier opened a shop at New York's JFK airport and Terminal A/B at Baltimore/Washington International has the first airport location of menswear chain Jos. A. Bank Clothiers. It's part of an overall trend of making American airports more luxurious. Recently we have seen an increase inairport spas and fine dining in U.S. airports but I wonder if Americans are really ready to shop in domestic airports (although we seem more than happy to do it overseas). The article suggests that the fact that prices for simple items like gum and water are so deeply inflated that Americans may fear they won't get a good deal in boutiques but I'm not certain that's the only reason. Do you shop in airports and if not, why not?

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Tags: airport shopping, AirportShopping, duty-free, hermes, luxury brands, retail, versace