Sadly, we can now add Joan and David to the growing list of niche brands that have stumbled after an overly ambitious retail expansion.
The East Coast company, created by the wife-and-husband team of Joan and David Helpern in 1968, prospered for decades as a manufacturer of stylish, understated shoes.
Its upscale footwear was once a mainstay offering at Ann Taylor Stores Corp., the women’s career clothing chain. But Ann Taylor dropped the line in 1990, choosing to develop its own private label shoe line at more moderate prices.
To make up for the lost sales, the Helperns embarked on an aggressive plan to create their own retail store empire, fleshing out their shoe offerings with lines of sportswear, outerwear and accessories.
In its heyday, Joan and David counted the likes of Jacqueline Onassis, Audrey Hepburn, Princess Diana and Madonna among its fans.
After opening 60 stores around the world, Joan and David found itself financially strapped. It was forced to file for bankruptcy protection in March, and last week, the company’s assets were sold to Maxwell Shoe Co. for $16.8 million.
The Boston-based shoe maker , in turn, has hired the Ozer Group of Needham, Mass., to liquidate the 21 Joan and David stores in the U.S., including its Chicago boutique at 670 N. Michigan Ave. A going-out-of-business sale is under way.
Maxwell Shoe isn’t in the retail business. It will sell the Joan and David brand to shoe retailers around the country along with its other footwear brands, which include Sam & Libby, Ann Klein2 and Dockers.
Move over: Martha Stewart was never very simpatico with Floyd Hall, the former chief executive of Kmart Corp. In fact, she publicly complained that Kmart’s management wasn’t listening enough to her about how to market her line of bed linens and towels, which are sold exclusively through the Troy, Mich.-based discount chain.
That’s all history now that Floyd has departed. In fact, the doyenne of domestic chic seems to be hitting it off much better with Hall’s successor, Charles Conaway.
After only a few months in the job, Conaway, who came from drugstore giant CVS Corp., has decided to reposition Kmart’s merchandise offerings, scaling back areas such as automotive accessories and hardware to make more room for Martha.
Just in time.
Stewart has expanded her product lines to include kitchenware, everything from copper-bottomed pots and enameled baking dishes to porcelain and ceramic dinnerware. The kitchen stuff joins Stewart’s other lines for Kmart, which include garden accessories, outdoor furniture and baby items.
Fast start: Speaking of discounters, Kmart has more competition than ever in the Chicago area.
Ames Department Stores Inc. opened two more stores in the area this week at 5630 W. Belmont Ave. and 1000 E. Sibley Blvd. in south suburban Dolton, bringing its total here to 10.
Although many retailers have seen their business soften this fall as higher gas prices have eaten into disposable incomes, Ames says it couldn’t be more pleased with the performance of its new Chicago stores.
Of the eight stores that opened last month, some of them in former Goldblatt’s locations, “We have exceeded every single plan we had for ourselves,” says Grant Sanborn, head of store operations for Ames. “We’ve had tremendous customer response.”
The two best-performing stores so far are those at 7538 Stony Island Ave. on the South Side and 1450 N. Cicero Ave. on the West Side, Sanborn said.
Ames’ target audience is urban working class households with total incomes of about $35,000 and senior citizens.
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Ames has a two-pronged offering for older customers. Members of its 55 Gold Club receive a 10 percent discount on merchandise, including sale items, every Tuesday. And at 60,000 square feet, its stores are much easier and quicker to navigate than Wal-Mart’s 200,000-square-foot behemoths.
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