The Saks Fifth Avenue flagship in Manhattan hosted a lavish party last week featuring NBA player James Harden to celebrate the company’s renewed commitment to the men’s business. The party also announced the opening of a newly renovated men’s department on the seventh floor, the addition of more than 125 new men’s brands Ron, Loewe and Jacquemus to Saks.com and the launch of a new men’s brand ambassador program called The Saks Man.
Tracy Margolis, the company’s chief merchandising officer, said the new investment in menswear was due to the category’s “significant growth over the past several years,” although she declined to provide specific revenue figures.
“As we focus on expanding our online offering and creating unparalleled men’s fashion and accessories on Saks.com, our stores will remain an integral part of the Saks Fifth Avenue ecosystem,” said Margolis. “The new men’s floor in New York reinforces the power of the store experience and reflects Saks’ reputation as a fashion authority.”
The new seventh-floor men’s section features 19 shop-within-a-shops from big brands like Bottega Veneta and Gucci, along with Céline’s first store, Céline Homme. It also houses Palm Angeles’ first store-within-a-store and Alexander McQueen’s first store-within-a-store under creative director Sarah Burton.
Louis DiGiacomo, svp and gmm of men’s at Saks, said that as Saks’ men’s business continues to grow, its in-store presence will continue to improve. Saks plans to add more big brands to its men’s ready-to-wear department, including Louis Vuitton, Martin Rose and Maison Margiela. In the next three months. Additionally, the floor has a central atrium area that features a variety of brands and artists that rotate every few months.
Saks.com, which spun off its brick-and-mortar business in 2021, has also expanded its men’s catalog extensively through digital. Buzzy brands like Jacquemus and Junya Watanabe are there, plus a special focus on activewear brands like Rhone, Fair Harbor, Sease and Alo Yoga. Men’s activewear is a fast-growing category expected to reach $450 billion by 2028, according to Grand View Research.
Finally, Saks has a newly launched invitation-only brand ambassador program called The Saks Man, of which Harden is an inaugural member. Ambassadors promote Saks’ marketing campaigns to their own audience and attend and host Saks events – like the opening party for the Seventh Floor Men’s Room. Other past ambassadors include NBA player Quentin Grimes and activist Saad Amer. The structure of the program is similar to that of the Women’s Ambassador Program launched in 2021 by Saks Social Club.
The move comes at a difficult time for Saks Fifth Avenue. Its parent company, Hudson’s Bay Company, went private in 2019 and the company does not share details of its financial affairs. But after it was announced that Saks.com was laying off 100 people two weeks ago, As of 2021, it has doubled that number.
At a time when e-commerce revenue was growing, HBC split Saks.com, turning Saks.com into a private company owned by HBC and investment firm Insight Ventures. But since then, the growth of e-commerce has slowed significantly. Layoffs are a common way to control costs when revenues fall due to inflation and by cutting costs.
But executives said the men’s business is a bright spot, with DiGiacomo saying December 2022 was a banner month for Saks menswear sales, surpassing December 2019 sales.
Men’s clothing as a whole has grown rapidly over the past three years, and the market is expected to reach $547 billion by 2026, according to Euromonitor. Saks has been increasing its investment in menswear for several years. DiGiacomo called menswear an “explosive category” in a 2018 interview with Glossy.
Menswear stylist Taylor Davis told the Glossy last year that menswear has seen a lot of excitement in fashion in recent years. Saks Fifth Avenue competitor Nordstrom has invested in its menswear, opening a separate men’s store in 2018 and hiring Hysnobit’s Gian Delion as head of menswear in 2020.
“Dudes care more about what they wear,” Davis said.
