The Shophound

CONTINUING SAGA: Barneys Upper West Side CO-OP Starts Renovating

The dismantling of the Barneys CO-OP chain has begun.
This week, the contemporary spin-off from the luxury store shut down the men's section of its Upper West Side location in advance of a transformation that will remove the Co-op name from its door and result in a women's-only Barneys New York boutique that better reflects the the overall image and new interior design of the Madison Avenue flagship. Similar renovations are also planned for the much larger Co-op at The Grove in Los Angeles. Ultimately both stores will wind up with more room for shoes and accessories and include more designer collections. Many observers believe that this is likely to be the fate of the remaining stores in the Co-op chain, which current management seems disenchanted with as an expansion vehicle for the Barneys brand.

Since the Chelsea location lost its lease after the last Warehouse Sale, New York is left with only the SoHo Co-op, which has always been a women's-only store, and the two-level Brooklyn branch on Atlantic Avenue between Clinton and Court Streets which is the last one outside of the flagship that sells men's collections. Right now, the store is a clutter of racks waiting to be made sense of while half of the store is being refashioned.

This metamorphosis leaves us wondering why Barneys is undertaking an expensive renovation to upgrade what has never been a particularly strongly performing Co-op location? The L.A. store is a more likely candidate as it is located not just in a busy shopping center, but one that has become a favorite place for retail chains looking to launch their latest store concepts before rolling them out. Despite close proximity to the luxurious Apthorp apartment building, however, the particular stretch of Broadway holding the West Side Co-op is entirely devoid of similar stores. The main foot traffic generators in the area are Fairway, Citarella and Zabar's with a large DSW store a few blocks away on 79th street. It now seems obvious that this Co-op store should always have placed a couple of blocks east on Columbus Avenue,  where it could take advantage of an increasingly busy retail strip full of women's boutiques like Rag & Bone, Intermix and Theory among others. Will jettisoning men's collections and making the store more luxurious and exclusive turn it into a successful mini-Barneys or more of a misplaced boondoggle? We will see at the end of the Summer when the transformation is expected to be complete.

Previously:
Metamorphosis: Is Barneys Dropping The CO-OP Brand?

METAMORPHOSIS: Is Barneys Dropping The Co-Op Brand?

The latest item from the endless generator of retail news that Barneys New York has become is that two of the retailer's freestanding Co-op units are set for a radical revamp that may ultimately lead to the chain's dropping the Co-op nameplate altogether. WWD reports that after the current season winds down, branches on the Upper West Side at 2151 Broadway (pictured above) and at The Grove in Los Angeles will simply be renamed Barneys New York and drop menswear entirely from the merchandise mix. Both stores will undergo renovations to reflect the new interior look of Barneys' Madison Avenue flagship, but will remain open during construction. Other co-op locations will presumably remain as they are for now, but the changes suggest that Barneys management team, displaying its now familiar lack of affection for the store's heritage and history, may ultimately be looking to retire the Co-op name from all of its smaller, boutique-sized freestanding stores and possibly lose the moniker entirely.

The new, all-women's  merchandising concept is said to comprise a broader assortment of brands including more expensive designer labels than one would originally have found in the Co-op as well as a greater emphasis on (no surprise here) shoes and accessories. WWD has no official statements from Barneys management, but an unnamed source indicates that the new concept is meant to reflect the increasing cross-shopping from floor to floor that customers demonstrate in Barneys flagship stores, and the belief among management that the chain "has more women shoppers in New York" despite its history and strong image as one of the city's premier men's retailers. While Barneys has closed underperforming and ill-advised Co-op and flagship locations over the past year, it has also opened new ones, so it is not clear that Barneys is looking to abandon the smaller-store format —not yet, anyway.

What it means for New York shoppers is that, with the forced closing of the original freestanding Chelsea Co-op, the only Barneys stores of any sort to carry men's merchandise in New York City will be the Madison Avenue flagship and the recently opened two-level Co-op on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The SoHo location has always been a women's only unit. Upper West Siders will lose one of the few upscale men's stores in the entire neighborhood, and the only one selling popular labels like Rag & Bone or Gant Rugger for men. Conversely, the new boutique-sized Barneys could potentially raise the level of women's designer offerings on the West Side which, until now, has topped out with the kind of upper tier contemporary designers that puts the Co-op in direct competition with other chains like Intermix. The strict distribution restrictions of the bigger luxury labels found in Barneys may limit exactly which apparel, shoe and accessory labels could be added to the smaller revamped stores, so it's hard to predict whether or not brands like Saint Laurent, Manolo Blahnik or Lanvin will suddenly be popping up in the West Side store.

Without any official statement from Barneys, it's hard to know exactly what their plans are for the Co-op chain, but these development strongly suggest that the Co-op name is poised to be phased out. It might be a plus for Barneys' women shoppers, but combined with the loss of the Chelsea Co-op, it's already a disappointment for Barneys' male customers.

Barneys New York Revamps Co-Ops (WWD)

WAREHOUSE RELOCATION: Barneys Warehouse Sale To Officially Move To Metropolitan Pavilion —But Why Bother?

Yesterday marked the end the last Barneys Warehouse Sale in its traditional Chelsea location, and the retailer took the opportunity to officially confirm to shoppers what The Shophound has predicted: that the sale would relocate to the Metropolitan Pavilion a couple blocks East on 18th Street. Of course, having seen the pitiful selection of merchandise that was left even by the time the sale was halfway over, we have wonder if it is worth holding the live, walk-in version of the sale at all?

One has to remember that when the Warehouse Sale originally created, Barneys was more of a local destination on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Seventeenth Street (now the homes of Loehmann's and the Rubin Museum of Art), and holding on off-site sale was a great way to clear out inventory from the previous season while devoting the main store's limited floor space to current, full price merchandise. Since then, however the retailer has expanded, added a whole network of 13 outlet stores and, just this season, created an ongoing Barneys Warehouse website that will be open all the time.

Much like the Academy Awards, the Barneys Warehouse Sale has always given shoppers something to criticize and complain about, but regular customers will probably be able to point to incredible designer deals in their closets that they never could have been able to afford if they hadn't found them at the sale -usually during it's last days when additional discounts can reach up to 50% and 60% off the lowest ticket price. We certainly have a few, but there hardly any such items this time when the sale's offerings were dramatically diminished from the first day. Most of the designer items for men and women were reserved for the website, where many of them are still available but without any additional reductions from their final clearance prices in Barneys' stores. Who knows when, if ever, they will be re-reduced?

So, at this point, with outlets and a full-time off-price clearance e-commerce site why do they even need do do theses sales at all? In fairness, it's more profitable for the store to sell clearance items online in an ongoing manner without slashing prices so dramatically, so we can't blame them for creating what is really an off-price e-commerce site that should compete with the likes of Bluefly or Yoox. Next season, they have already given notice that the sale would focus only on men's tailored clothing and dress furnishings, but if the reduced selection we saw last week is any indication of what we can expect -and much of it felt like we had already seen it at previous Warehouse Sales- then we don't see why Barneys should even bother continuing with it at all. As we said when we reviewed this sale's first day offerings, The Warehouse Sale that we knew and loved is finished. Let's let it go.

Barneys Warehouse Sale (Official Site)
Previously:
Warehouse Report: About the Sad Excuse For A Barneys Warehouse Sale That Opened Yesterday

WAREHOUSE UPDATE: Additional Reductions At Barneys Warehouse Sale

The Shophound really didn't think we would bother checking back at the disappointing Barney's Warehouse Sale, but since we were walking past it yesterday, we checked to see how things were progressing. The first additional reductions have been posted including an extra 25% off on selected categories like men's dress shirts and Women's shoes among others. From what we can tell, there will be no additional merchandise added to the racks, as they looked substantially less full than they did last Thursday. The men's department is even drearier with whole sections of the space completely empty and closed off. Still, if you wear an XL or larger, there is an abundance of blue-star sport shirts at an extra 75% off the lowest ticket price, so for the right person, a remarkable bargain ma still be waiting for you —just keep expectations low.

Click on the image at left for a complete list of yesterday's additional markdowns.

Barney's Warehouse Sale Through February 24th at 255 West 17th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues, Chelsea

WAREHOUSE REPORT: About the Sad Excuse For A Barneys Warehouse Sale That Opened Yesterday

A lot of New York shoppers may be thinking that the next week will be their last chance to catch one more opportunity to shop the Barneys Warehouse Sale that has been a seasonal bargain resource for years.

Well, unfortunately for them, that would have been last Fall. The sale that opened up yesterday in the longtime Chelsea space that Barneys will soon be turned out of is so diminished that The Shophound wonders why they bothered holding it at all. A lot of us have been wondering if the new online Barneys Warehoue site would have an impact on the amount and quality of the merchandise made available at the final sale in its traditional location, and the answer is yes to both concerns. Clearly, and in fairness, smartly, the retailer has reserved the best items to sell online. What is left for this sale is a pretty pitiful selection of goods that didn't make the cut. In terms of sheer volume, there appears to be about half the amount of merchandise available as we have come to expect from this event, which is why the sale seems strangely spacious. Women's apparel, the main draw, is now arranged only by category rather than designer, which suggests that the designer selection is fairly light at best. The women's shoe racks appeared reduced in numbers to us, and it was difficult for us to tell how much of the merchandise was from this past fall or previous seasons. There is virtually nothing from the Chelsea passage home department except for some stacks of coffee table books which regulars will recognize as leftovers from last season's sale. Women's accessories are similarly sparse, and the whole thing seems conspicuously meager.

Downstairs in the men's department is where you can really see how the event has been cut back. Men's tailored clothing has been reduced in space by at least half, as have dress shirts and furnishings, but not socks and hats. For some mysterious reason, there are bins and bins of socks and hats —more than we have seen before— but that hardly makes up for the sad shoe selection. It has been stripped of any of the desirable brands Barneys is known for in favor of some dodgy looking private label merchandise, and a few tough-sells from high profile labels

The second basement section, usually devoted to sportswear, is now reserved for merchandise from previous seasons with blue-star stamped tags. This may be the only opportunity for a real bargain, since it is all being sold for 75% off the lowest ticket price. It is mostly aged merchandise, so what is available is definitely hit or miss, and some sizes are barely represented. There is a much smaller blue-star section upstairs on the women's floor as well, and both departments offer an orange tag area featuring none too appealing priced-as-marked goods that appear to be damaged or otherwise altered in some way.

Overall, the entire sale is a disappointment, and just seems depressing. As usual, nothing has yet been reduced beyond its most recent ticket price, but we're not sure that you would want it even if it were marked down further. The sale that we all knew and looked forward to is now long gone. We have been told that next season, a new sale will be held focusing on menswear, but if this is any suggestion of what we can expect from future sales, then we don't see the point in continuing with the walk-in sales at all. Put it all online or send it to the outlet stores. The old Barneys Warehouse Sale is dead. Let it rest in piece.

Barney's Warehouse Sale Through February 24th at 255 West 17th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues, Chelsea

 

WAREHOUSE UPDATE: Barneys Warehouse Sale Opens On Thursday —No Additional Markdowns Online

Oh, Barney's Warehouse Sale! We never know what to expect from you anymore.
The final sale at its regular location starts on Thursday, so this may be the last time, particularly for women, to stand in line on 17th Street and shop in a basement through a frenzied crush of crammed racks for the luxury store's final markdowns. That never sounds incredibly appealing, and yet it draws us back season after season. Somehow, there's always something there to tempt us and, obviously, plenty of other people.

Around this time last season, Barneys tested out an online Warehouse Sale for the first time which ended just as the regular sale began, and like its non-virtual counterpart, offered deep discounts just before it closed up. This year however, the Warehouse website will remain open permanently, and, unfortunately, we can find no such discounts this time around. How the online Warehouse Sale will handle re-reductions remains to be seen, but at the moment, everything seems to remain in the same 50% to 75% off zone as when the site launched a few weeks ago.

So get ready. Thursday starts your last opportunity to enjoy the Warehoue Sale you have come to know and love. We will try to stop by and check up on tings as we always do. Next season it will be a mostly (if not exclusively) Men's clothing affair in a Chelsea location yet to be officially anounced. Stay tuned for updates.

Barney's Warehouse Sale February 14th -24th at 255 West 17th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues, Chelsea
Click image above to enlarge full details.

WAREHOUSE UPDATE: Barneys Warehouse Sale Is Live Online

The final sale in Chelsea doesn't start for 10 days, but the Barneys Warehouse Sale's new online outlet went live this morning permanently. We perused the offerings, and though we couldn't examine every single item, we got a pretty good idea of what can reasonably be expected.

First of all, there appears to have been no further price reduction in the transfer between Barneys stores and website to the Warehouse Sale website. Most reductions are in the 50% to 60% off range with a few items edging up to 75% off. This is not terribly surprising. Regular Warehouse sale shoppers know that in the first few days of the seasonal Warehouse Sale, price tags remain unchanged from full line stores' final clearance sale. The real savings happen when additional markdowns are taken as the sale progresses. Will this same dynamic of additional reductions be in effect online? We will have to wait and see.

Merchandise will be from the last season and possibly earlier. The Shophound spotted a pair of Mark McNairy boots we snagged at the last Warehouse Sale, but the price had reverted to the previous 50% off ticket price, without the deeper additional discounts we enjoyed when we bought them... five and a half  months ago.

On the plus side, the site looks almost exactly like the regular Barneys New York site, with the same interface, design and filters. It also features free domestic shipping on orders over $150, not quite as good as the main site, but chances are, you will probably be spending over $150 anyway.

Another plus is that merchandise that had previously been sold out online has now been replenished with consolidations from Barneys stores' stock, but we are curious to see how this affects the abundance of merchandise for the actual sale in Chelsea. If Barneys diverts goods to its online stock, will there be as much to buy for walk-in customers next week? We will find out more in the coming weeks, but we are expecting that the interest in Barneys final seasonal Warehouse Sale as we know it in Chelsea will be high, so brace yourselves for big crowds one last time.

Barneys Warehouse Sale (Official Site)
Previously:
Barneys Online Warehouse Sale Starts Monday & Stays Open Forever

WAREHOUSE REPORT: Barneys Online Warehouse Sale Starts Monday & Stays Open Forever

We have all been wondering exactly what form the Barneys Warehouse Sale will take after this season's finale at the familiar 17th Street location, and it turns out that the online version that appeared last season will become a permanent off-price site. Barneyswarehouse.com, launching on Monday, ten days before the physical Warehouse Sale is scheduled to begin. Unlike last season, however, the website will remain open as an ongoing clearance outlet for the store. Of last August's test of the online sale, Barneys Executive Vice President Daniella Vitale tells WWD, “We dipped our toe in the water and the [test] was enormously successful... It indicated this is something we should be doing on a long-term basis. They can all coexist and grow together”

The new ongoing site will act as an online version of Barneys' 13 outlet stores, though Vitale underplays the fact that Barneys buys merchandise to sell specifically in those stores (and we believe at the Warehouse Sale as well) that is never sold in full line Barneys New York locations. The site is expected to offer merchandise from previous seasons at up to 75% off including all product categories found in the stores.

What does this mean for the walk-in Warehouse Sale of the future? Vitale confirms that it will continue at a different location after this season, but it will primarily focus on men's tailored clothing, which is typically mmore challenging to sell online than men's sportswear and women's apparel, and requires more sales assistance. “The origin of the warehouse sale was as a men’s sale,” Vitale says, and it has always taken a substantial space in the traditional Warehouse Sales of the past. This means that going forward after this season, the racks of women's shoes and designer apparel will probably be reduced, or possibly eliminated altogether, along with much of the men's sportswear. Will Barneys be able to sustain a full-time website for clearance along with 13 outlet stores without buying additional off-price merchandise? Time will tell, but the upside will be not having to endure the lines to get in or check out, for one thing. What merchandise will be available remains to be seen, but at least it will presumably not have endured being crammed on racks and being pawed by who knows how many rapacious shoppers, often leaving once appealing goods somewhat the worse for wear by the end of the sale. Whether or not the website will also mirror the deep discounts that typically appear during the sales' final days also remains in question. We will all be anxious to see how this plays out in the coming months, so stay tuned.

Barneys New York to Launch Off-price Site (WWD)
Previously:
Warehouse Flash: Barneys Next Warehouse Sale Starts On Valentine's Day

LUXURY SHUFFLE: Bloomingdale's Rolls Out The Luxury Leases For Gucci & Prada

Like any major department store, Bloomingdale's is a continually evolving work-in-progress, and over the past few seasons, the store has added an abundance of luxury megabrands to its main floor that hasn't been seen at 59th & Lexington since the store's fabled heyday in the 1970s and 80s. How did it happen? To a certain extent, Bloomingdale's is becoming less of a retailer and more of a landlord.

The most recent addition to the flagship's string of accessory boutiques are two Gucci boutiques, one for women (pictured above), and one for men, and men's counterparts to the recently opened Prada and longtime Louis Vuitton shops on the Lexington Avenue Arcade section. In fact, the store has just finished replicating a men's version of the Arcade concept along the Third Avenue wall of the main floor including Prada, Gucci, and LV (pictured below) along with smaller spaces for Ferragamo, Turnbull & Asser, Thomas Pink and Paul Smith. Why did Bloomingdale's have to lease out these shops? Probably because they wouldn't have been allowed to carry the labels any other way.

How this happened is a story about how luxury brands are changing their way of dealing with American retailers and what it means for New York's shopping scene. Readers may remember a few seasons ago when Barneys made a surprise announcement that it was dropping Prada's women's apparel and accessory lines from all of its stores. Barneys had been a Prada supporter since long before it had been a household word, and was believed to have a strong business with the brand. However, Prada management was insisting that if the store wanted to continue carrying women's clothes and accessories (shoes and men's collections were not included in the deal) that it would have to turn over space to the brand so it could run its own boutiques under Barney's roof. Barneys claimed that this was against its policies, and let the lines go. For Prada, and other companies like it, this reflected a common practice in Europe that they were anxious to roll out to North America. Department stores in major overseas cities are often almost entirely made up of independent designer shops cobbled together under one roof, but for a store like Barneys which, changes in management notwithstanding, has always prided itself on the taste and curatorial authority of its fashion office and merchandising staff, having a vendor control what is sold in its store was out of the question, so a big chunk of Prada business went out the door. At around the same time, a brand new Prada accessory shop appeared in the North-West corner of the main floor at Bloomingdale's, which has never carried it, and is still working to burnish its luxury image after a damaging trading down during the recession of the 1990's. The existing Prada department at Saks Fifth Avenue also appeared taken over by its vendor at around the same time. We wouldn't be surprised to see a leased Prada apparel shop appear in Saks any day now. They already have one for Vuitton.

Such arrangements are not unprecedented. In the late 1990's Louis Vuitton notified its retail partners that it was closing its wholesale business entirely, and converting to a fully leased shop-in-shop program, and any store that wanted to continue selling it would have to comply. Most of them did, and the Vuitton shops in Bloomingdale's, Saks and Macy's all became leased departments which have been dramatically expanded in the time since. Gucci has quietly engineered a similar exertion of control. The new Bloomingdale's shops as well as a large one upcoming in Macy's are all leases, and the brand has recently taken over existing men's and women's apparel and accessories shops at Saks Fifth Avenue. Only shoes are left to the store's own buyers. As these mega-brands -all of whom have gained dramatically in prestige over the past two decades- get bigger they are increasingly turning to the stores who helped built their success and taking that business back. What it means is that stores that wish to continue selling the labels are forced to give up some of their merchandising control (Bloomingdale's, Saks) or drop the lines (Barneys). So far the one store untouched by all this struggle for control appears to be Bergdorf Goodman, which has had several Gucci departments for years, and in the past few seasons, has repaired a relationship with Prada that was bitterly broken about 15 years ago leading to a decade-long banishment of the brand. Bergdorf's shares Barneys' policy against leasing space in their main product categories in part because both stores encourage cross selling by staff throughout the store that leasing can make difficult and confusing. One wonders if Gucci and Prada will be similarly turned out of Bergdorf's in the coming seasons, or if the brands will let it stand as a single store exception. What we may see going forward is a power shift from the client to the vendor, where luxury mega-brands choose to bestow their cachet on stores that meet their terms. They are already pretty demanding as it is. Brands like Chanel and Giorgio Armani have long lists of requirements for for stores who sell their products as authorized resellers, but leasing is another level of control. Eventually we might see a contest of prestige between the big designer labels and the stores who wish to carry them.

WAREHOUSE FLASH: Barneys Next Warehouse Sale Starts On Valentine's Day

It will be a bittersweet Valentine's Day next month when Barneys kicks off its final Warehouse Sale in what will soon no longer be the Chelsea Co-op store. Our friends at Racked have been speculating that this may be the last Warehouse Sale ever. We hate to step on anyone's spin, but we are pretty sure that yesterday's WWD article that confirmed the closure of the Chelsea location was pretty specific that after next month's sale, another one was planned "in a new location one block away in August or September".
So, let's all just take a deep breath and stop worrying if the seasonal sale will continue, and start speculating about where it will continue. That's more fun anyway, right? Metropolitan Pavilion? Some other warehouse space in Chelsea? Who knows?

So far, we have no official word on whether the store will repeat the online component of the sale from last season which ran in advance of the traditional event. Followers will remember that prices were reduced at periodic intervals online in the same way they do at the main sale, and saved shoppers a lot of standing in line and uncivilized elbow checks. So far, Barneys' own Warehouse Sale site has not yet been updated, so we don't have complete dates, but, as always, we will keep watching.

*SALE HUNT* Barneys Warehouse Sale (Mizhattan)
The Barneys Warehouse Sale Has a Date (But Will It Be the Last?) (Racked)
Barneys Warehouse Sale (Official Site)
Previously:
Coming & Going: Barneys Co-op Officially Closing In Chelsea, But A Downtown Flagship Could Be In the Works