Department Stores

Luxury retailers are looking for new customers, and they've found them at the outlet mall. Faced with unprecedented sales declines, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom are among a growing cadre of high-end retailers building more outlets, where sales have fared much better.

Yvonne Dutton's life was saved by a department store. When she was raising eight children on a meager budget supplemented by food stamps, the Huntington Beach woman didn't have the time or money to shop at Nordstrom. And things got even worse when her 37-year marriage ended in divorce. It was a time when most of her peers were contemplating their leisure years, yet Dutton found herself looking for a new career at age 60. It wasn't long before she found Nordstrom.

Qiana Zimmerle got an early start on her Christmas shopping last week, heading to a Kmart in Burbank where she loaded up a cart with toys, clothes and a High School Musical game. But with money tight this year, instead of going to the checkout line, Zimmerle dropped the gifts off at the layaway counter, paid a small deposit and left the store -- for now. Over the next few weeks, she'll make regular payments on the remaining $113.18 balance and pick up the items when she's paid it off.

Bloomingdale's may expand the 37-store chain by opening smaller stores in new markets, Chairman Michael Gould said Friday. Bloomingdale's may open stores that are 150,000 to 180,000 square feet, compared with its average of 225,000 to 240,000 square feet, in markets that include Arizona, Nevada and Florida, Gould said. He declined to specify the number of stores or the timing. Bloomingdale's is the smaller of two chains owned by Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores Inc.

The nation's largest specialty apparel retailer, Gap Inc., mired in an extended sales slump, staunched its losing streak in January as retailers Thursday reported solid sales. Some retailers cited January's cold snap as a sales booster. But Quiksilver Inc. said an unseasonably warm winter and poor snow conditions in the U.S. and Europe had a decidedly different effect on its sale of ski gear.

The FBI and the largest U.S. retail group are creating a computer database to track crime rings that steal as much as $37 billion in merchandise each year from department stores, restaurants and jewelers. Sears Holdings Corp. and Federated Department Stores Inc. are among the retailers that will share information with the FBI. The data will be stored in a secure national database called the Law Enforcement Retail Partnership Network, the National Retail Federation said.

Department store retailer Saks Inc. said fiscal first-quarter profit fell 86% from the year-ago period, which included gains on the sale of its Saks Department Store Group businesses. The company operates Saks Fifth Avenue, which comprises 54 Saks Fifth Avenue stores, 49 Saks Off 5th stores and saks.com as well as Club Libby Lu stores. Net income in the quarter ended May 5 fell to $11 million, or 7 cents a share, from $77.

And now, retail Darwinism. Macy's and other stores increasingly are focusing on their own fashions, putting them in intense competition with the very apparel manufacturers that helped build the stores' business in the first place. And that has created what one industry observer called a "survival-of-the-fittest" battle for display space that has turned the traditional department store floor plan on its head.

Absolute elegance permeated Bullocks Wilshire department store in its heyday. Customers were "patrons." Women were "ladies," and ladies wore hats. White-gloved clerks wrote sales slips by hand so the vulgar "ding" of cash registers would not disturb the genteel atmosphere. The store's 14-karat-gold credit cards alone cost $400.

Jones Apparel Group Inc., the maker of Jones New York clothing and Nine West shoes, accepted a sweetened $942.3-million offer for its Barneys New York luxury department store unit from Dubai investment firm Istithmar. Fast Retailing Co., Asia's largest apparel retailer, said it was evaluating whether pursuing Barneys would be in its shareholders' best interests. Fast has until 5 p.m. Eastern time today to raise its $950-million bid. Jones, based in Bristol, Pa., would have to pay a $34.