Saks Fifth Avenue
| Saks, Inc. | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Incorporated |
| founding | 1924 |
| Seat | New York City , New York , USA |
| management | Marc Metrick ( CEO ) |
| Branch | retail trade |
| Website | www.saksfifthavenue.com |
Saks Fifth Avenue is an American luxury department store chain with headquarters in New York City .
The first Saks department store, which opened on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in 1924, was followed by other branches in the USA over the years (as of 2015: 38 branches in 22 states and Puerto Rico ). In addition, since 2001 there have been five international branches operated by license partners and 90 American branches of the outlet subsidiary Saks OFF 5th, founded in 1992 . The company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange from 1996 to 2013 via the parent company Saks Holdings, Inc. (from 1998: Saks, Inc. ) . At the end of 2013, Saks Fifth Avenue was bought by the Canadian Hudson's Bay Company , which has since opened Saks stores in Canada and is planning further openings, including in Germany. The Saks range includes high-priced clothing, shoes, jewelry , accessories and cosmetics for women, men and children, as well as delicatessen items , gifts, home textiles and furnishings from the upscale segment.
Company history
The Baltimore merchant Andrew Saks opened a clothing store in Washington, DC in 1867 and founded Saks & Company in 1902 with a store in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue . After his death in 1912 his son Horace took over the management. Horace Saks merged in 1922 with the New York merchant Bernard Gimbel, so that on September 15, 1924, a joint business with an upscale assortment on Fifth Avenue, between 49th and 50th Street across from the later Rockefeller Center , under the name Saks Fifth Avenue could be opened. At the same time, both the Saks & Company and Gimbel Bros. stores for the middle class were continued.
Because Horace Saks died unexpectedly of blood poisoning in 1926 , his assistant, Adam Gimbel, a cousin of Bernarnd, took over the business. Gimbel Bros. eventually owned all three chain stores. Under Adam Gimbel, exclusive designer fashion was imported from Europe, the shoe range expanded, exclusive shops-in-shops integrated in the elegantly renovated Saks main building and a seasonal branch opened in Palm Beach . With the Chicago store, the first comprehensive Saks branch was opened in 1929. In the late 1930s there were ten Saks stores in the United States. By the time Adam Gimbel retired in 1969, Saks Fifth Avenue's branch network had grown to 28 stores in 16 states. In 1970, Saks Fifth Avenue launched ordering via a folio catalog (discontinued in 2001). Between 1972 and 1989 another 20 Saks stores opened in the United States.
In 1973 British American Tobacco took over the Gimbel Bros. Group. The flagship store on Fifth Avenue was extensively renovated in 1978, and the Gimbel stores were closed until 1986. In 1990, Bahrain-based Investcorp, which then owned Gucci and Tiffany & Co. , took over Saks for $ 1.6 billion. In 1992, Saks opened the first outlet store called the Clearinghouse in Pennsylvania , which offered unsold merchandise from the Saks stores at reduced prices. The outlet division was renamed Saks OFF 5th in 1995 as part of expansion plans and still exists with over 90 stores to this day. In 1995 the largest Saks store to date opened its doors in Beverly Hills . In 1996, the parent company Saks Holdings, Inc. went public on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: SKS). In 1998, the Alabama department store group Proffitt's , which also owned other American department store chains (all sold until 2006/2007), took over Saks Holdings Inc. for $ 2.1 billion and changed its own name to Saks, Inc., which existed around the early 2000s 60 Saks stores and 50 outlet stores. In the summer of 2000, the company's own online shop also went online at saks.com.
There are or have been five Saks branches at international locations via license agreements: Dubai (closed at the end of 2016), Bahrain , Almaty and Mexico City (2 ×). The first licensed shop was opened in Riyadh in 2001 (closed in 2012).
On July 29, 2013, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) of Canada announced that it would buy Saks, Inc. for $ 2.9 billion. The transaction was completed in November 2013. Since then, Saks has been a subsidiary of HBC. At the end of 2014, the Saks building on Fifth Avenue was valued at $ 3.7 billion.
In spring 2016, Hudson's Bay opened the first Canadian Saks store in Toronto . Further Canadian branches and shops of the outlet division Saks OFF 5th followed. On September 9, 2016, the second Saks store in Manhattan opened its doors in the Brookfield Place shopping center .
In the summer of 2017, Hudson's Bay, which also belongs to the Kaufhof chain, opened Saks-OFF-5th branches in Germany. All German branches have been permanently closed again since July 2019.
Marc Metrick, a Hudson's Bay executive, has been CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue since 2015 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Saks Fifth Avenue: About us saksfifthavenue.com, accessed December 3, 2016
- ↑ Saks Fifth Avenue: International locations saksfifthavenue.com, accessed December 3, 2016
- ↑ Saks Fifth Avenue Plans New Store In Saudi Arabia in Retail Expansion wsj.com, November 9, 2000
- ↑ Hudson's Bay buys Saks for 2.9 billion fashionunited.ch, July 30, 2013
- ↑ The most expensive department store in the world manager-magazin.com, November 24, 2014
- ↑ Saks OFF 5TH comes to Germany handelsjournal.de, July 6, 2016
- ↑ DPA: outlet chain Saks Off 5th closes all stores in Germany. April 5, 2019, accessed on December 11, 2019 (German).