Bullock’s for Women Planned in Newport : Retail: R.H. Macy & Co. is expected to announce it is creating a store geared to female shoppers in its empty Fashion Island building. A menswear counterpart at South Coast Plaza has been successful.

Creating an Eve to match their Adam, R. H. Macy & Co. executives are expected to announce today that they plan to open a Bullock’s for Women store in the shuttered I. Magnin building in Fashion Island.

The new operation will be a few miles from a companion Bullock’s for Men store, the company’s highly successful venture at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

The conversion comes as retailing giant Macy seeks to find new uses for the remaining 12 units of the I. Magnin chain, which it decided to shut down last November. Some are being converted to furniture-only stores and one in Rolling Hills Estates recently opened with the Bullock’s for Women concept.

Chain officials hope that Bullock’s for Women in the Newport Beach shopping center will attract a loyal following the same way that the opposite gender has flocked to Bullock’s for Men at South Coast Plaza. Opened in another former I. Magnin space, the three-floor men’s store has thrived by offering everything from cartoon-character socks to Armani suits.

“It’s very successful,” said Bullock’s spokeswoman Merle Goldstone. It is able to set itself apart from other men’s stores with a large inventory and full-line selections of designer wear.

The Costa Mesa men’s emporium also solved the problem of what to do with an odd-size store like the one in Newport Beach. At 80,000 square feet, the Fashion Island building is dwarfed by Neiman Marcus nearby at 120,000 square feet and Robinsons-May at 235,000 square feet.

The concept is in keeping, too, with a trend toward specialization in the retail industry. Specialty operations have taken such a toll on mainline department stores that the department stores are fighting back with hybrids like Bullock’s for Men.

“A lot of department stores have lost a lot of market share to specially priced specialty stores, so a lot of the department store companies are saying, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’ ” said Kurt Barnard, a retail economist in New Jersey.

Women and men rarely shop the same places so there is no need to put fashions for both under the same department store roof, asserted Robert Kahn, a retail newsletter publisher in the Bay Area community of Lafayette.

But creating a separate boutique for women, as opposed to men, has its share of risk. Women are already the queens of the department store with three times the space devoted to their apparel compared to menswear. Whether they will shop a large store exclusively devoted to them, rather than a regular department store, remains to be seen.

Moreover, sales of women’s wear are in a serious slump. Holiday sales nationwide were poor last year despite predictions that women would go on shopping binges to make up for several years of scrimping during the recession.

Part of the reason for the sluggish sales is that women aren’t finding the clothes they want to buy.

“There have been no specific hard-line fashion trends. The last was the grunge look . . . and it never caught on in the mainstream,” said Tony Cherbak, a retail consultant for the firm of Deloitte & Touche in Costa Mesa.

Still, ideas like Bullock’s for Women may be just the kind of creative idea that could add luster to tarnished sales.

“It’s a concept that might be right for the times because nothing new has been done,” Cherbak said. “This might strike a surge with Bullock’s.”