THE JANUARY AXE: Kate Spade Discontinues Saturday & Jack Spade Stores To Be Shuttered

The month isn't over yet, so there's at least one more bit of retail reorganization to be executed before we pass into February. Kate Spade has announced that it will be closing all of its Jack Spade and Kate Spade Saturday stores in the first half of 2015 as it will be folding the Saturday line back into the flagship collection and focusing Jack Spade on wholesale and online selling. A total of 28 stores will be closed including 16 Saturday and 12 Jack Spade locations, so here in New York we will have to say goodbye to the Saturday store on Spring Street as well as the original Jack Spade on Greene Street in SoHo where the men's brand was launched and the Bleecker Street store which was extensively renovated less than a year ago.
It must be noted that though the Saturday brand, an attempt to launch a more casual, lower priced offshoot, will apparently be discontinued, Jack Spade, the men's counterpart to the Kate Spade label, will remain in operation under a modified business model and available through stores like Saks fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's among others. In fact, the brand is being expanded to include tailored clothing and dress furnishings, categories which, according to Kate Spade & Co. executives, are more favorably grown through wholesale strategies. Closing dates have not yet been announced, but before you get too excited about imminent store closing sales it sounds the stores will operate relatively normally through most of the Spring season before closing sales —if any—begin. Still, keep your ears to the ground. All of the New York stores are in highly desirable locations, particularly Bleecker Street (pictured above), so there may be pressure to turn over those leases to eager new tenants sooner rather than later.

Kate Spade to Wind Down Kate Spade Saturday, Jack Spade Stores (Wall Street Journal)