Lord & Taylor Making A Return

Almost eight years after Lord & Taylor left the South Florida market, the retailer is ready to dip its toe back in.
Lord & Taylor will open an outlet store this summer at Dolphin Mall. It’s only the third outlet store in the country for the brand and its first opening in the state since Lord & Taylor closed all its stores here in 2003.
Chief Executive Brendan Hoffman said South Florida is tops on the retailer’s list for new market expansion plans. Lord & Taylor would like to return to the market with full-price department stores — if Hoffman can find the right locations. .
Lord & Taylor is back in the expansion mode after years of questions about the retailer’s long-term future and a revolving door of three different owners. The retailer’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York has undergone a successful $25 million makeover and chainwide sales are growing at a double-digit pace.
At the end of last year, Lord & Taylor announced plans to open its first new full price store in a decade in Yonkers, N.Y. Chairman Richard Baker said in December it was the first step in the ramp-up of an expansion plan.
When Lord & Taylor left South Florida in 2003, it had stores in Aventura and Dadeland malls, plus two in Palm Beach County. Florida was the state most dramatically affected when Lord & Taylor decided to scale back operations and focus on its core markets in the Northeast and Midwest.
“I would love to get all my old stores back,” Hoffman said.
But that’s not an option. Nordstrom ended up with the key spots in Aventura and Dadeland, while Neiman-Marcus took the vacancy in Town Center at Boca Raton.
The Dolphin Mall outlet will be similar to the two others the retailer has opened in the last year. The outlet stores are part of a strategy for clearing out end of the season merchandise from the regular stores.
Source: Miami Herald

 

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