store closings

Saks Fifth Avenue To Close Another Store

How much is too much? That's the question Luxury Daily asked when considering the announcement that Saks Fifth Avenue is closing its seventh retail location since July, the Saks Fifth Avenue store at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver, Colorado. The luxury retail chain already closed its Saks Fifth Avenue stores in Mission Viejo and San Diego, CA; Southampton, NY; Portland, OR; Charleston, SC; and Plano, TX in 2010. The Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5TH store in The Legends at Sparks Marina in Reno/Sparks, Nevada also closed at the first of the year.

Some luxury watchers cheered the move saying that it was a smart response to a changing luxury market. The news came out last week as Saks announced that revenue in stores open at least a year rose 11.8 percent in December. Another piece of good news: sales for the five weeks ended January 1 rose 10 percent to $432.2 million from $393.7 million a year earlier. The best-selling items of the month included women's and men's clothes, shoes, purses and makeup.

Approximately 100 associates are employed in the Denver Saks Fifth Avenue store which will close on March 19. All affected associates either will be offered transfer opportunities or will receive appropriate employment separation packages. The Denver store opened in 1990 and is approximately 87,000 square feet. The departure of the store leaves a hole in the Cherry Creek Shopping Center which may not be able to find an anchor store to fill the spot for some time. The space fronts East First Avenue, making it a prime spot for luxury shopping for the right tenant.

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Saks Fifth Avenue To Close More Stores

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Shopping

Back in May we learned that luxury department store Saks Fifth Avenue was closing two stores, one in Portland, Oregon store and another at the Fashion Valley Mall in San Diego, California. Now two more underperforming stores are set to close. The Saks Fifth Avenue store in Southampton, New York closes on Saturday and the Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5TH store in The Legends at Sparks Marina in Reno/Sparks, Nevada closes at the first of the year.

"We routinely review the productivity, profitability, and potential for each of our stores and may determine it is appropriate to close a store from time to time," noted Steve Sadove, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Saks. "Store closing decisions are difficult ones to make, but the planned closing of these two locations is consistent with our strategy of deploying our resources in productive stores and closing underperforming stores, when feasible." Other Saks store closings have also includes stores in Charleston, South Carolina and Plano, Texas. The Saks Fifth Avenue store in Mission Viejo, California also closes later this month.

Tags: saks, saks fifth ave, Saks Fifth Avenue, store closing, store closings, store closures

Movado To Shut Down Retail Watch Boutiques

by Ariel Adams (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Timepieces / Watches

American owned watch maker group Movado, will permanently shut down all of its Movado brand watch store boutiques in the US. There are under 20 Movado boutiques in the US - each located in mostly high population areas or large cities. Movado watches will still be sold by independent third party retailers. The Movado boutiques, which sold watches as well as Movado jewelry were apparently not seeing sales nearly on par with corporate expectations. Having personally entered a few, I can't help but blame unqualified, under-trained employees for at least some of the problems.

While Movado hasn't done spectacularly over the last few years, they haven't seemed to do worse that other competitor watch brands that have equally been hit by the 'tragically bad for luxury items' recession. Movado group seems to site a lack of overall profitability recently, and sees the closure of its boutique store division as a serious help in moving back towards profitability. Not all is lost though, Movado will retain one boutique store as its flagship retail location, the Movado boutique in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Most of the Movado outlet stores will remain in operation. In addition to Movado, the group also makes and markets ESQ and Ebel watch brands. Most famous for making the Museum Face Watch one of the most iconic timepieces around, the last few years have arguably seen some of Movado's strongest product offerings in years. Movado will place most of its efforts on its wholesale business, so consumers looking for Movado watches will simply go to one of their many authorized dealers.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

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