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I'm very sad to see Lord & Taylor's flagship store (on Fifth Avenue between 38th and 39th Streets) closing.
Does anyone else think that if the store had been higher up Fifth Avenue, or even anywhere around Central Park South, it would have performed better?
For a typical upper-income shopper, which is Lord & Taylor's customer base, there's really no large destination retailer south of around 45th Street, and the big upscale department stores are located between Saks Fifth Avenue (around 50th), Bergdorf Goodman (around 60th Street), and now luxury retail goes as far west as Nordstrom and the Time Warner Center (West 50s) and as far east as Bloomingdale's (East 50s). Lord & Taylor is outside of that "luxury zone" of higher-end retail.
When B. Altman (now a CUNY graduate center library or something, on Fifth Avenue around 35th Street) was still a department store, did having another higher-end retail anchor draw better stores to Fifth Avenue between 34th and 42nd Streets, and more customers to Lord & Taylor?
Again, so sorry to see the store go.
A lot of issues with Lord and Taylor but the location of the flagship store was definitely one of them, especially after B. Altman closed. The retail atmosphere on Fifth between 34th and 42nd went into a downward spiral after Altman's closed. Lord and Taylor was left down there all by itself essentially and a lot of 3rd rate retail crap moved in after Altman's left.
Lord&Taylor is a victim of being left in the dust and poor name association due to the name.
I always thought that Lord&Taylor was a female-only department store. It was only when i started working in wholesale that i discovered that it was a co-ed department store.
Bloomingdales, Saks, Neiman, Nordstrom, Macy's, Bergdorf don't have the issue in regards to the name association. They also kept up with the times in terms of brands, private label collaboration, etc.
I agree. When I shop, I do Saks, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus among other places. I didn't even know L&T was co-ed. They definitely aren't fashion forward. Even Barney's is great. They've carried Italian luxury brands like Jeckerson, which you would usually find in a boutique Downtown if anything like Massimo Bizzocchi (when they were in the Meatpacking District).
I also question its management. Who in his or her right mind would close a chain's flagship store on Fifth Avenue, if you own the building--unless you ran up so much debt doing silly acquisitions that you need to do a fire sale of your company's assets and don't care about the long-term viability of your business?
I view 34th Street as a very strong retail area; it's packed full of people. Not upper-income people, though; none of my co-workers or friends would set foot there, except for a quick Target run every now and then.
L&T to me seems kind of in a "dead zone" between the upscale 50s along Fifth Avenue and downscale 34th Street.
I disagree about the dead zone disadvantage. It's always seems weird and counter-productive when similar businesses bunch up, like two dry cleaners on the same block. I think that it may well benefit a store not to be hemmed in by similar stores.
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