Lord & Taylor never had a distinct brand to set it apart
By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published August 1, 2003
You'd think a department store chain that started when our sixth president, John Quincy Adams, took office some 177 years ago might have more patience and institutional savvy than to expand across parts of the Southeast, build a presence in Florida and recently enter the Tampa Bay market - only to say never mind in one fell swoop.
But that was exactly what May Department Stores, parent of the venerable if vaguely branded Lord & Taylor chain, did this week. Lord & Taylor announced it will close 32 stores. Seven are in Florida, including the less than 2-year-old store at Tampa's International Plaza, and another at Orlando's Florida Mall where Lord & Taylor opened less than a year ago.
Geez, you guys barely gave Central Florida a chance.
In all, more than one-third of Lord & Taylor's 86 stores nationwide will close. Layoffs may top 3,700 employees, including about 700 in Florida.
Call it Sunbelt pride, but isn't it odd that Lord & Taylor is abandoning entire big-population states like Florida and Texas, high-growth Atlanta and even Colorado? It will retreat to more familiar - if distinctly slower-growing - turf that a May spokesperson describes as "the Northeast, stretching in an arc to Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis."
Lord & Taylor says it wants to retreat, I mean return, to those markets where its brand is better-known and can be more clearly revived, perhaps, as an upscale store. Good luck.
Truth is, if we were dropped blindfolded into the heart of most department stores these days, most of us would be hard pressed to name the chain.
We got a small taste of the coming consolidation of retail brands in May when Federated Department Stores of Cincinnati, parent of Florida's Burdines, said it will be changing the 56-store chain's name to Burdines-Macy's in February.
That's part of the problem. Now that the bull-market shopping craze of the 1990s is history, department stores find they are overbuilt, overextended, overpriced, overlapping, overdependent on frequent sales, and uncomfortably close to being over the hill.
Needless to say, retail experts are picking apart Lord & Taylor's expansion strategy faster than a buzzard strips roadkill. Among the insights:
- Lord & Taylor lacked retail buzz. It just didn't excite customers because it never really communicated what it offered that was different from all too many other department stores.
- Pitching Lord & Taylor as a higher-end store in a retail market such as Tampa, crowded with name brands like Neiman Marcus, Saks and Nordstrom, was no picnic. Compounding the problem was a nasty competition by mid-priced chains - surely you've noticed the aggressive sales wars among Burdines and Dillard's and J.C. Penney - and the rise of Target, Wal-Mart and specialty stores.
- Lord & Taylor at times lacked a regional sense for merchandise. What worked as "conservative" in New York or Ohio came across as "drab" in sunny Florida.
- Operating single stores in metro markets such as Tampa Bay and Orlando made it expensive to operate. And the further Lord & Taylor ventured from the Northeast, the more time and effort was needed to acquaint consumers to the store's up-north image.
Of course, the same challenge confronts Saks, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, with each operating just one department store in this market. But these stores still enjoy a better-defined brand with consumers. They have more buzz. Will it last?
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