Joe Mimran, an iconic name in fashion and the creative force behind Joe Fresh and Club Monaco, has now turned his attention to pricey used handbags.The Canadian Press
Joe Mimran, an iconic name in fashion and the creative force behind Joe Fresh and Club Monaco, has now turned his attention to pricey used handbags.
Mr. Mimran, until recently a dragon on CBC's business reality show Dragons' Den, is chairman and co-chief executive of a company that is backing vintage luxury fashion retailer LXR and Co. On Friday, it is planning on taking the chain public through an $82.5-million reverse takeover.
Montreal-based LXR carries second-hand lines of designer brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada – mostly handbags currently – for up to half of their original price at shops in department stores and other brick-and-mortar outlets as well as online.
And while department stores are in decline, Mr. Mimran is counting on enough of them surviving and catering to customers who covet a "pre-owned" diamond-studded Hermes crocodile Birkin bag for $175,000, which is LXR's most expensive item sold to date, rather than the original $300,000. Over all, customers spend an average of $750 each at the vintage retailer, he said.
"We still believe there will be a place for some department stores," Mr. Mimran said in an interview. "There will be a thinning of the herd, there is no question in our minds. But there will still be more than enough business."
In a retail market that is being roiled by bankruptcies, store closings and fierce e-commerce challengers, LXR is staking its future on a rising demand for used luxury items at bargain prices in brick-and-mortar stores and online. It is mapping out a strategy of global expansion and branching out into other fashion accessories and clothing as well as men's products.
"It has good core elements to build upon," said Milton Pedraza, chief executive officer of consultancy the Luxury Institute in New York. "It's top brand names; it's vintage and classic, good quality that you can refurbish. It is recycling goods – environmentally friendly. That is pretty appealing."
The concept feeds into a growing appetite among young consumers for authentic items at more affordable, if not rock-bottom, prices, he said.
LXR grapples with fewer shoppers heading to department stores, but it is following a less risky path by setting up shop in existing stores – such as Hudson's Bay in Canada and Lord & Taylor and Dillard's in the United States – rather than investing in its own store leases, Mr. Pedraza said.
Emerging players in the luxury fashion resale market are primarily e-commerce retailers, including U.S.-based TheRealReal and Tradesy and Paris-based Vestiaire Collective, said digital research firm L2 in New York.
Annual sales in the U.S. second-hand luxury fashion field are expected to nearly double to $33-billion (U.S.) by 2021 from $18-billion today, L2 said in a report this week. "While the apparel market is struggling, the resale market is booming," it said. "Online resale disruptors are a major catalyst." It said those cybersales are rising by 35 per cent annually – 17 times faster than the overall U.S. apparel industry.
And it said high-income shoppers make up almost half of all resale customers, diverting business from traditional players.
Still, by putting LXR in department stores, "you risk simply not getting enough traffic to make it a worthwhile investment," said Brian Lee, associate director of luxury retail at L2. Even so, the LXR business model is something akin to one in another growing retail segment: off-price discount designer sellers such as Winners, he said. But even some resale purveyors have struggled. Massachusetts-based consignment chain 2nd Time Around is going out of business, closing all of its estimated 40-plus stores "because of a convergence of market forces hitting all brick and mortar stores – including increased competition from online retailers combined with skyrocketing rents," a recent statement on its website said.
Doug Stephens, president of consultancy Retail Prophet, said LXR taps into a "treasure hunt" mentality that draws shoppers to chains such as Winners and Costco in search of new items on store shelves.
And having Mr. Mimran involved is a feather in LXR's cap, given his stellar retail track record and deep relationships with industry insiders, Mr. Stephens said.
LXR generates about 5 per cent of its $21.9-million (Canadian) of sales from e-commerce, which it expects to rise to 20 per cent by 2021, Mr. Mimran said. With 46 shops today, 32 of them south of the border, it is targeting up to 205 stores – and as much as $150-million of overall sales – by the end of 2018, he said.
The retailer has not forecast profit targets in its going-public filing; in 2016, it posted a net loss of $28.3-million, which was mostly one-time items, especially as a result of the change in value of preferred shares and warrants. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, a measure of a company's operating performance, came in at almost $800,000, the prospectus said.
Mr. Mimran, a director of LXR responsible for its global growth, heads Gibraltar Growth Corp., which is one of a handful of special purpose acquisition corporations, or SPACs, that raise money and buy companies.
Gibraltar features an array of high-profile executives from private equity, banking and media firms on its board of directors, including Joe Natale, CEO of Rogers Communications Inc. and former CEO of Telus Corp. Gibraltar's advisory board includes Jordan Banks, managing director of Facebook Canada and Instagram Canada.
Founded by a Montreal husband-and-wife team in 2010, LXR differentiates itself by sourcing much of its inventory at attractive prices from distributors in Japan, which has a well established used-luxury fashion market, Mr. Mimran said. LXR doesn't depend as much as rivals do on individuals selling their second-hand items to retailers, he said.
It also gains an edge with a "60-minute process" of authenticating vintage branded products, sending photos of them to its in-house experts in Montreal and New York, he said.
And without the burden of leasing stores, LXR has a "capital light" business model, which lets it act nimbly, he said. It signs three-year agreements with retailers such as Hudson's Bay Co. and U.S. discounter Century 21 to operate within their stores. By fall, LXR will launch in House of Fraser and John Lewis department stores in Britain, he said. "If the store is not performing, it's very easy for LXR to pull its assets and put them in a better location."
Mr. Mimran acknowledges the challenges in today's retail industry, predicting physical store space in North America will shrink by between 20 per cent and 30 per cent in the next three to five years. Even so, by 2019, when the market could stabilize, LXR will look to selectively launch its own standalone flagship stores, he said.
"Shopping is not going to disappear at physical stores completely," he said. "But it is going to be challenged and it is going to have to continuously reinvent itself."