Barneys new retail strategy may involve abandoning Gotham’s iconic biannual event — the warehouse sale.
New Yorkers who trudged to the most recent sale, which ended last week, with great expectations got a taste of just how abysmal the sale has become.
“It was a total bust,” said one diehard shopper who has been there every year for more than a decade. “There was less merchandise, and far less really good merchandise.”
Another griped, “I went three times and bought two pillows. That was it.”
“What once was a prototypical New York experience has been diminished to an idea of what it was,” a third shopper said.
Mark Lee, Barneys’s CEO and a former Gucci boss, is charged with turning around the struggling retailer. He is said to look down his nose at the warehouse sale and has reportedly ordered that all the good stuff be shipped off to clearance centers, rather than to the sale, which lures shoppers with deep discounts on designer clothing, shoes and homewares.
Howard Davidowitz, a retail tracker, said the warehouse sale was a bit gauche for Barneys’ luxury mission. “It is part of Barneys’ heritage, but Lee comes from Gucci, which never had big sales.”
Candace Corlett, an analyst at WSL Strategic Retail, backed that view. “There are so many more prestigious ways to get rid of excess inventory than having a warehouse sale where merchandise is stomped on and moved around and damaged. Why would Barneys do that when they could sell it on Gilt or Ideeli?”
Continuing to run a “fake” ware house sale for the sake of it could tarnish Barneys’ image, she said. “Shoppers aren’t stupid.”
A few diehards might miss it. But not everyone. “I’ve not been for years. You can find the same stuff in the store at the same prices weeks before without all the BS,” said a stylist.
Barneys said Lee was not available for com ment, but a spokesperson said there was less mer chandise at the sale be cause Barneys bought the right amount of product and therefore had less to offer at a deep discounts. Julie Earle-Levine
Honor
What do Quentin Taran tino, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, Leonardo
DiCaprio and pop tart Kylie Minogue all have in common with Universal Music chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge?
Award yourself a glass of champagne if you guessed that they’ve all been honored as, “Officiers des Arts et des Lettres.”
If you thought Universal was all about hip-hop, Gaga and Justin Bieber, you’d be wrong. Universal is owned by France’s Vivendi, and reps the catalog of many French mainstream artists, including the legendary Johnny Halliday.
Grainge, known more for his love of British soccer team, Arsenal, than French pop culture, will nevertheless be presented with a lapel clip to honor his contribution to the nation.
It won’t be happening in Gay Paree, however. The French are coming to him. British-born Grainge, who sources say will be moving to Los Angeles within weeks, will be feted in Beverly Hills tonight.
His award will be presented by Frederic Mitterand, the French culture minister, who’s also the former French president Francois Mitterand‘s nephew. Claire Atkinson
Workman’s comp
If art really does protect a civilization from vanishing, then Sotheby’s is doing its footwork well.
In an homage to disappearing blue-collar Americans, the auction house put on the block last week the ultimate symbols of working stiffs — work boots — as envisioned by two major contemporary artists.
The auction drew cash-laden art speculators and members of the Russian billionaire class, whose thirst for refinement prompted heavy bidding that swelled gavel prices by as much as threefold for the seemingly ordinary, but possibly extinct, pieces of Americana.
One artwork was a 6-by-6½-foot poster for heavy work shoes, drawn in 1985 by Andy Warhol in a throwback to his roots as a display ad illustrator. (His ad displays work shoes for $7.80, and high-top versions at $12.88.) The piece went on the block for $400,000 and fetched nearly double that, at $758,500, from an unidentified collector.
The other work was a pair of tattered and worn work boots, carefully replicated in ceramic with real leather laces. Made in 1983 by the late sculptor Marilyn Anne Levine, the life-size feet of clay went on the block at a low estimate of $6,000, but fetched $18,750 from an unidentified collector.
The pieces were among a large sale of 343 works of Contemporary Art scooped up in shopping frenzies in the last few years by upstart hedge fund multimillionaires. The sale fetched $9.4 million, with many pieces selling only for modest or little gains. Paul Tharp