Bloomingdale's

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bloomingdale's is a chain of upscale American department stores owned by Federated Department Stores, which is also the parent company of Macy's. Bloomingdale's has 36 stores nationwide, with annual sales of $1.9 billion dollars. It competes on an average price level with Nordstrom, and slightly below that of Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

Bloomingdale's started in 1861 when brothers Joseph and Lyman Bloomingdale started selling hoop-skirts in their Ladies Notions' Shop on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The pair were sons of Gerard Bloomingdale, a salesman who had lived in North Carolina and Kansas, and settled in New York City. The brothers opened their East Side Bazaar in 1872, selling a variety of garments and European fashions. As the store and its success grew, it moved in 1886 to 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, anticipating and capitalizing on the northern movement of New York's upper and middle classes. By the 1920s, the store covered the entire city block.

Its most famous location is still the Manhattan flagship store located on 59th Street and Lexington Avenue. During Queen Elizabeth II's visit to New York City in the 1970s, traffic had to be reversed on Lexington Avenue so the Queen could exit her vehicle on its right side and enter the store by its main entrance.

In 1961, the company started marketing itself with designer shopping bags. To this day, Bloomingdale's is especially known for its iconic and prominently labeled "Little," "Medium," and "Big Brown Bag."

[edit] Growth strategies

Bloomingdale's has expanded slowly from its New York base, moving into Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts in the 1970s; Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, and Chicago in the 1980s; and finally establishing a presence in California in 1996. The company has carefully targeted affluent, densely populated areas in which to locate its stores. Over the years as its parent Federated Department Stores has acquired rivals or consolidated divisions, Bloomingdale's has been able to pick up desirable, hard-to-replicate locations including Abraham & Straus at Roosevelt Field, Stern's at Willowbrook, Bridgewater Commons and Roosevelt Field (the location of Bloomingdale's furniture gallery), The Broadway at Sherman Oaks Fashion Square, Century City Shopping Center, Beverly Center and Fashion Island Newport Beach (the apparel store only), Emporium at Stanford, Macy's Atlanta at Lenox Square and Perimeter Mall, and mostly recently the pending conversions of Robinsons-May at South Coast Plaza and Fashion Valley Mall, Filene's at Chestnut Hill and the Hecht's under construction at Chevy Chase, Maryland. Also in fall 2006, Bloomingdale's opened a new West Coast flagship store in the redeveloped Emporium flagship in San Francisco.

[edit] Current locations

Future locations are in italic

[edit] California

• Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • Los Angeles (Century City) - Westfield Century City - 235,000 sq ft. (opened 1996 in former The Broadway building)
  • Los Angeles (Fairfax District) - Beverly Center - 163,000 sq ft. (opened 1997 in former The Broadway building)
  • Los Angeles (Sherman Oaks) -Westfield Fashion Square - 229,000 sq ft. (opened 1996 on site of former The Broadway)
  • Costa Mesa, Orange County - South Coast Plaza - 289,000 sq ft. (opening May 2007 in former Robinsons-May building)
  • Newport Beach, Orange County - Fashion Island - 172,000 sq ft. (opened 1996 in former The Broadway building)
  • Newport Beach, Orange County - Fashion Island Home Store - 68,000 sq ft. (opened 1997)
• San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • San Diego -Fashion Valley Mall - 218,000 sq ft. (opened 2006 in former Robinsons-May location)
• San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • San Francisco - Westfield San Francisco Centre - 357,740 sq ft. (opened 2006 on the site of the former Emporium department store on Mission Street, as part of a major expansion of the San Francisco Centre Shopping Mall on the former Emporium's Market Street site.)
• San José-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area
  • San Jose MSA/Palo Alto - Stanford Shopping Center - 229,000 sq ft. (opened 1996 in former Emporium building)