Sears is trying in-store boutiques on for size at a handful of East Coast stores this fall.
The 10,000- to 15,000-square-foot shops within the larger Sears locations, called Showcase at Sears, will have apparel and accessories from 11 brands based in Europe and Mexico, including Spain’s Mango, the Hoffman Estates-based department store chain said in a news release last week.
“These curated collections are a perfect complement to our existing apparel assortment and offer exposure to brands you’d otherwise have to travel internationally to try on,” Joelle Maher, president and chief member officer for Sears, said in the release.
The push to liven up the clothing racks came as a struggling Sears said lackluster apparel sales contributed to another quarter of sales declines. Same-store sales fell 7 percent in the second quarter of 2016 compared with the same period the year before, parent company Sears Holdings said in a news release last week.
Shops-in-shops aren’t a new idea for department stores, but Showcase will be Sears’ first large-scale experiment with the concept, said Sears spokesman Brian Hanover.
Some retailers have used them to spotlight collections of merchandise targeted at particular customers, like J.C. Penney’s sections, called The Boutique, devoted to the department store’s new plus-size brand announced earlier this year. Others, like Nordstrom, use them to feature a rotating cast of up-and-coming designers or pop-up shops to give customers a reason to keep coming back and check out new brands.
The Showcase boutiques will have a mix of apparel for men, women and children along with women’s shoes and handbags. The concept will be a pilot at three New York and two New Jersey Sears stores, and there are no specific plans to bring them to Chicago-area stores at this time, Hanover said.
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