Beauty and bling.
As Kohl’s Corp. aims to double sales through 2010, two areas where it stands a good shot of winning market share this holiday season are its beauty department and a more upscale jewelry section, an analyst says.
The $11.7 billion Wisconsin-based retailer, a pioneer in freestanding department stores, has hired a manager from fine jeweler Zale Corp., will beef up training and replace some lower-end baubles with fine jewelry.
“Kohl’s is moving into high-priced jewelry with the introduction of certified diamonds in 300 stores this fall,” Citigroup analyst Deborah Weinswig said in a report.
Kohl’s also should be able to drive sales with exclusive beauty-product brands–American Beauty, Flirt, Good Skin and Grassroots–that have been rolled out chainwide and backed up with ads featuring actress Ashley Judd, she said.
Menswear is a third promising area, she said. The company’s new Lincoln Park store, which opened in May, has twice as many dress shirt displays than typical Kohl’s stores. The chain will have 732 stores by the end of the year.
Not all in a name: While some avid Marshall Field’s fans threaten to boycott the Chicago-born retailer after it becomes Macy’s, at least one recent name change in the Chicago area hasn’t backfired.
More than a year ago, Tory Kiam changed the name of his $60 million Bensenville-based jewelry business from Lady Remington to Lia Sophia, named after his two daughters.
The switch seemed fitting coming from the scion of the late Victor Kiam II, who liked Remington shavers so much that he bought the company, or so he said in TV commercials. In 1986, the elder Kiam bought a direct-selling jewelry business named Act II and renamed it Lady Remington to more closely associate it with him.
But with Victor Kiam’s death in 2001, and with the family later selling the Remington shaver business, it no longer made sense for its jewelry operation to be associated with a name conjuring up razors and guns.
“It’s a feminine name, and it keeps the family element in the business,” Tory said recently.
The name change hasn’t hurt.
Lia Sophia expects to end the year with 7,000 sales representatives, more than double the number with which it began the year. It expects to end calendar 2006 with 14,000 consultants.
In recent years, Lia Sophia has revamped its product line, expanded its marketing and design team and improved the look of its catalog and Web site.
It’s also riding a wave of growth in the direct-sales industry, a $30 billion sector that has been expanding 7 percent a year, Dan Stanek, executive vice president of consulting firm Retail Forward Inc., said during a May conference in Chicago. Other growing direct-selling players include Avon Products Inc., Amway Corp. and Mary Kay Inc., he said.
Lia Sophia has 206 Bensenville workers, up from 120 at the start of the year. Most new hires are in the inspection area–the company examines every piece of jewelry–and in shipping and customer service.
Loose ends: Chicago-based Hartmarx Corp.’s Hickey Freeman Co. unit has opened its second New York City store. … Perhaps in anticipation of a coming movie and his death in 2003, use of the search term “Johnny Cash” increased 205 percent from September 2004 through last month, according to data from Shopping.com. … The online shopping comparison site also notes that the use of the term “sexy Halloween costumes” increased 180 percent over the past two weeks.
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byerak@tribune.com.
