Hudson’s Bay‘s luxury women’s department ‘The Room‘ will open September 14th at Lord & Taylor in New York City and in 2014 at Hudson’s Bay in Montreal. NYC-based Lord & Taylor is owned by the same parent company as Hudson’s Bay.
Hudson’s Bay President Bonnie Brooks made these announcements during the March 13th Walrus Speaker Series.
The Room is already present in Hudson’s Bay stores in Toronto (21,500 sq ft, opened October 2009) and Vancouver BC (almost 20,000 sq ft, opened September 2011). It carries top-of-the-line ready-to-wear and accessories by such luxury designers as Balmain, Giambattista Valli, Azzedine Alaia, Roland Mouret, Sonia Rykiel and others.
Lord & Taylor is looking to ‘up its fashion game’ by introducing The Room to its Manhattan store. Compared to competitors Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, Lord & Taylor is a bit more ‘traditional’ and generally not as upscale. Introducing ‘Room’ with designers like Moschino, Nina Ricci, Erdem and Comme des Garcons will launch Lord & Taylor into a new fashion realm creating competition for the newly renovated Third Floor at Saks Fifth Avenue (link includes video) located a few blocks up Fifth Avenue from Lord & Taylor’s flagship.
One potential issue with the Montreal ‘Room’ is that some of the staple designers from the Toronto and Vancouver Rooms are already carried at either La Maison Simons or Holt Renfrew. This means there will likely be label wars in a market that already has limited affluent shoppers (Montreal lags significantly behind Toronto and Vancouver in terms of luxury retail sales).
Hudson’s Bay website: www.TheBay.com
Lord & Taylor website: www.LordandTaylor.com
The Room website: www.TheBay.com/TheRoom
