Saks sale skirmish
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I stopped into Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills on Friday and it looked as if the upscale department store was having a fire sale. The shelves in the handbag department, once filled with metallic YSL totes, quilted Marc Jacobs hobos and more, were picked clean, thanks to an aggressive pre-sale that meant some designer items were up to 70% off before Thanksgiving.
Same thing in the shoe department, which looked as if a hurricane had blown through, with stray Louboutins and Choos strewn every which way, and a few straggling shoppers fighting over the scraps. Behind a makeshift screen sat hundreds and hundreds of Saks shopping bags, full of pre-sold shoes and bags available for pickup tomorrow — when the actual sale starts.
The stunt transformed the sleepy store into a storm of shopping commotion, I will give them that. Meanwhile, there wasn’t a soul in Barneys New York or Neiman Marcus.
Consider this Saks scene:
“Are you getting those?” one woman said to another standing sentinel in front of a pile of shoe boxes tall enough to graze her thigh.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure, because those are my size,” the woman pleaded.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
I heard rumors of bag thwacking and hair pulling, too. I witnessed none, but don’t doubt it could have happened.
I had to wonder what stock is going to be left when the real sale starts. Not to mention the after-Thanksgiving holiday shopping season. But maybe that’s the point. Saks sales fell 16% in October, and no one knows how bad it’s going to get this month or next. So Saks drew first sale blood.
I e-mailed the store’s PR department for an explanation and was told that stock would be replenished on a daily basis to keep up with customer demand. But the more pressing question was about the future of the store that is one-third of Wilshire Boulevard’s luxury department store troika.
“There are no plans to close the Beverly Hills store,” Caroline Dougherty, vice president of public relations for Saks Fifth Avenue, wrote in an e-mail. “It is one of our top performing locations.”
At least for now.
Photo: A Saks holiday window in December 2007.
Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times