Well, the Club Libby Lu stores have officially now closed. The website is down, and without even a banner or “thank you for your business”. It’s just plain unavailable – must be for sale (with an Compete page rank today of 23,811, someone is probably interested).
It seems we hear about one international chain after another closing these days (or at least cutting back), but so far the children’s apparel industry has faired quite well. In trade research, we find many more new brands and new stores opening than we find closing. The overall children’s clothing & accessory market, in fact, is anticipated to continue to experience growth in 2009.
Was Club Libby Lu too far on the fringes of this growth market? We think so. We believe they tried to get in on this growth by masquerading as an apparel store, which was an inauthentic and significant departure from their core business.
We posted an article on August 16, 2008: “Back to School with Club Libby Lu – Not so Fabulous“. Just 4 short months before the stores announced closure on Nov. 2, 2008, they launched a major (and to us, unimpressive) TV advertising campaign that attempted to promote Club Libby Lu apparel as appropriate and desirable back-to-school wear for young girls. Our aghast at the commercials charged us to research the company a bit — and we found the commercial advertising to be inconsistent with the company’s stated mission and vision in an over-the-top, exploitive way.
Is it this exploitive character that eventually drove the closure, possibly coupled with the current economy? It’s uncertain. In our research we found this statement in a press release from Saks Inc. (owner of Club Libby Lu) which makes sense, but seems to cover-up the real reasons for closure. After all, who closes a national chain of 98 established stores “just because” it’s out of alignment with a core business?
“[Saks Inc.] acquired Club Libby Lu in 2003 primarily as a growth vehicle and traffic driver for its Saks Department Store Group (“SDSG”) business [such as the Parision stores] which has since been sold.
Steve Sadove, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Saks Incorporated, noted, “Club Libby Lu is an innovative concept that was a better strategic fit with our traditional department store business. Discontinuing the operations of Club Libby Lu is the appropriate decision so that we can focus 100% of our time and resources on executing the strategies of our core Saks Fifth Avenue business.”
In a good economy, and with the right vision for the company, we assume Club Libbly Lu would have been swooped and bought out vs. swooped away like powder on a puff.
While Club Libby Lu may not have found the perfect formula, they were filling an area of public demand. This opens the space up for someone else to fill and/or for the smaller, private knock-off businesses to thrive.
Suzanne Rielle, Co-Founder Loobalee.com
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