Changing Bloomie’s : Posh Retailer Says Its Snooty Days Are Over
For two generations of upscale New Yorkers, the elegant Art Deco department store at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue was much more than a place to shop. It was a place to see the new and glamorous, a place to get a date, a place to experience retailing as theater.
It was . . . Bloomie’s, the second-biggest tourist attraction in the Big Apple, a hotbed of high fashion. Sure, Bloomingdale’s was expensive, but then Manhattan was never a place to save money. You find the service a bit brusque? Well wake up, honey, this is New York!
Now, the legendary institution plans to open four stores in Southern California, reportedly including one on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills. The first store could open by spring of 1997.
But it is coming as a much-changed operation, with a chairman well-schooled in the ways of Southland retailing.
In fact, Bloomingdale’s has tracked and defined many of the central currents of post-World War II consumerism, right up to a near-fatal leveraged buyout in the 1980s and a new, service-oriented approach for the 1990s. In its newest incarnation, the store is a little less glamorous and a little less New York, but that just might make it play better west of the Hudson.
“It has been changing dramatically for the past 2 1/2 years,” says Michael Gould, Bloomingdale’s chairman, who once headed the Robinson’s department store chain and Giorgio of Beverly Hills. Under Gould’s predecessor, Marvin Traub, Bloomingdale’s became famous for just about everything except customer service. Founded by two brothers in 1872, the store was long a successful but undistinguished competitor on the New York retailing scene, until Traub turned it into a phenomenon.
He supported young, unknown designers, and played a key role in popularizing the likes of Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan. He created the shopping bag as artwork and developed spectacular themed promotions featuring the art and culture of countries and regions.
Its 1980 China festival, for example, cost $2.5 million and attracted 11 million visitors and generated 415 pages of media coverage, according to Traub’s recently published memoir, “Like No Other Store.”
“When it comes to merchandising and visual display, when it comes to generating traffic, no one could outdo us,” Traub boasts in the book. Through much of the 1970s and 1980s, Bloomingdale’s was the place to shop, for society matrons, celebrities and the merely upper-middle-class.
But in 1988, Canadian developer Robert Campeau acquired Bloomingdale’s parent company Federated Department Stores, in what proved to be a disastrous leveraged buyout. By 1990 the company was in bankruptcy--and the glitzy, consumption-crazed 1980s, which played perfectly with Traub’s exuberant style, were very much over.
Even without the financial crisis, Bloomingdale’s had weaknesses. The 14 stores outside of Manhattan were never able to match the cachet of the flagship, which accounted for nearly half the chain’s sales.
“The snap, crackle and pop works best on Lexington Avenue,” says Alan Millstein, editor of the Fashion Network Report. “Many of the branches look pale compared to the mother store.”
And the high prices and inattentive service hurt, especially outside New York. Gould, who took over after Traub was forced out in 1991, is squarely focused on these issues, which will undoubtedly be critical to success in the Southland.
“We didn’t pay enough attention to the (non-Manhattan) stores,” he says. “We didn’t look at the nuances of the locales, didn’t have the right specialty merchandise. . . . There was a fixation on 59th Street at the expense of the other stores.”
Gould acknowledges that shifting too much attention to the branches and giving up theater in favor of service could undermine what made Bloomingdale’s special. But he’s confident that Californians, 60,000 of whom already shop at Bloomingdale’s by catalogue or when traveling, will be sufficiently impressed.
And at least some visitors don’t think Bloomingdale’s has lost any of its verve, at least not in Manhattan.
“I very much like the style of the building and the atmosphere,” said Jacqueline Kessler, a resident of St. Gallen, Switzerland, who was shopping there Friday. “Every time I come to New York, I have to come to Bloomingdale’s.”
Bloomingdale’s at a Glance
Bloomingdale’s, an upscale department store chain that operates primarily on the East Coast, is owned by retail giant Federated Department Stores Inc. A snapshot of the company:
* Headquarters:
New York City
* Chief executive:
Michael Gould
* Employees: 9,400
* Major services: Retailer of upscale fashion apparel and household goods. Operates a mail-order catalogue with a database of 600,000 customers.
* Stores: 16 department stores in nine states; each store averages 192,000 square feet of sales space.
* 1993 revenue: $1.1 billion
Sources: Bloomberg Business News, company reports
Researched by ADAM S. BAUMAN / Los Angeles Times
