Bloomie’s Gets Set for Its Seattle Debut
Bloomingdale’s has set Nov. 2 for the opening of Bloomie’s in Seattle and has disclosed the brand lineup for the 19,000-square-foot site.
Bloomie’s, a scaled-down slice of Bloomingdale’s, focuses on casual and contemporary styles and convenience. There’s flexibility in the store design allowing the company to grow or shrink presentations of brands and trends, depending on sales patterns. Bloomie’s in Seattle, located in University Village, is the third Bloomie’s to open. The other two are in Fairfax, Va., and Skokie, Ill.
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Bloomie’s represents the Bloomingdale’s brand’s entry in the Pacific Northwest. The assortment is being curated to local preferences both in brand mix and product categories. It will offer a range of on-trend ready-to-wear and accessory brands such as Veronica Beard, Rag & Bone, Polo, MZ Wallace and Alo Yoga. An expansive shoe section will display Birkenstock, On and Vince, among other labels. Beauty brands will include Byredo, Augustinus Bader and Maison Francis Kurkdjian.
The store will also have a space for rotating pop-ups and trend presentations as well as local food and beverage concepts. Bloomie’s will be selling a number of brands exclusively in the Seattle market, among them Sandro, Maje and James Perse.
For Macy’s Inc., emerging specialized off-mall formats are apparently a growing part of the retailer’s future, either opening a unit in a market where the corporation has no stores, or, to strengthen its presence in a market where it already operates stores. Last August, when Macy’s Inc. issued its second-quarter report, the company said four more small format Macy’s stores are opening this year, bringing the count to 12. The new units will simply be called Macy’s, while existing stores under the format continued to be called Market by Macy’s, though that could change in the future.
“We got the right developers thinking about us and wanting us to move in,” Macy’s Inc.’s outgoing chairman and chief executive officer Jeff Gennette told WWD, as he discussed the off-mall specialty store strategy. “We think we’ve got the construction costs right, and the right layout but we still need to get the curation down in different parts of the country. We’re not declaring victory yet. We still have to get all the learnings right. Hopefully, this will be a scalable model in the future. We’re not doing this for kicks. We believe this is where the customer expects us to be.”
“The expansion to University Village represents the introduction of our Bloomie’s store concept to the west coast,” said Charles Anderson, director of stores at Bloomingdale’s. “Although this is our first physical storefront in the area, Bloomingdale’s already has an engaged customer base in the Seattle market.” Events and special offerings are planned around the Seattle launch, including a dog fashion show to support the Seattle Humane Society.
Bloomingdale’s, a division of Macy’s Inc., has 34 department stores, 20 outlets, two Bloomie’s, two overseas licensed department stores in Dubai and Kuwait, and an e-commerce website.
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