Alexis Bittar Rolls Out Four New York City Stores as Brand Climbs Back
Alexis Bittar’s relaunched brand is quickly moving toward its full vision.
Over the last week, the company opened four physical retail locations across New York City and will open additional stores in San Francisco and Brooklyn by the end of the month.
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With the locations in Manhattan and another in Brooklyn, Bittar said he is taking advantage of lowered rents and using physical retail as an opportunity to connect with clients as well as use the spaces as “an extension of marketing.”
“Even when I had my business before, I did the same thing. In 2008 when the recession hit, I opened five stores. It’s definitely a model we have had, that when people are panicking, I am bullish. I think that what we got are rents that are 40 percent reduced and I don’t think they will be that reduced again for a long time and I also wanted to show what the new brand was,” Bittar said.
The designer announced last month that he had purchased the rights to his brand back from Brooks Brothers and planned to go full-force in relaunching the company as a creative entity. The New York designer started selling handmade costume jewelry on the streets of downtown Manhattan in the 1980s, ultimately becoming a household name.
In 2012, Bittar entered a joint venture with private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners, and sold half of his brand for $24 million. Three years later, he and TSG sold the brand to Carolee LLC — a subsidiary of Brooks Brothers — for an undisclosed sum. Fast-forward to July 2020 and Brooks Brothers was in bankruptcy proceedings. Bittar purchased the intellectual property for his own brand back for $2.75 million.
Now back on the horse, Bittar said the onetime “glut” of high-end costume jewelry that plagued his market sector has dried up – leaving women searching for creative, high-quality designs.
He is also branching out, selling homewares, vintage pieces — and soon — a line of handbags. “We increased the assortment, we will launch handbags in the spring that will be in-store in January. We increased with soft accessories and hair accessories as well as homewares. We have vintage, which I’ve always done, but we have added vintage homewares, too. As far as jewelry is concerned, I’ve scaled it down. I was always known for super bold pieces and I scaled down because I felt like that is what people are wearing,” Bittar said.
The designer said what is working best so far is the company’s unique approach to marketing. “We have a core customer of 40- to 60-year-old women and we are not doing the typical fashion thing in marketing of using an 18-year-old model to sell to a 50-year-old,” he said.
“I think we are definitely really focused on digital marketing, so bringing in a new customer and embracing an older customer. I bought my business back from Brooks Brothers and obviously there was a customer base with Brooks Brothers that is now layered in. I think what we found by redoing the site and having a true diversity of models with age, size and ethnicity is that we are having a real response,” Bittar added.
Bittar’s New York City outposts — with locations on the Upper East Side, Upper West Side, SoHo, Greenwich Village and, soon, in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn — aim to bring a sense of “theater” to retail.
He enlisted Tony-award-winning set designer Scott Pask to design stores that “feel like the set of a play — there is a theatrical component. The idea is of an abandoned institution from the ’70s with minty, bluish-green walls. A lot of things are very imperfect — the paint is coming off the walls sometimes,” Bittar said, noting that each location has its own unique sense of whimsy.
While Bittar projects that 60 to 70 percent of the company’s sales will come through e-commerce, he said: “I feel like it’s important to have a look and feel — something that someone can experience in-person.” The designer said he will look to keep this store count through 2022 and add four more locations in 2023.
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