According to a recent article from Fashionista, J.Crew’s big turnaround plan has not worked. At all.
“In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018, the company posted a net loss of $74.4 million compared with a net income of $34.7 million in the fourth quarter the previous year,” the story reported, adding that “net sales decreased 4 percent for both the quarter and the year as a whole.”
A major contributor to those disappointing numbers were a series of expensive endeavors initiated by former CEO Jim Brett, including the short-lived sub-brands Mercantile and Nevereven, the second of which literally existed for 16 days. (16 days, for the record, is 1.54 Scaramuccis.)
Current President and CEO Mike Nicholson – the brand’s third CEO in two years – told investors that “the sub-brands ‘caused confusion’ and left J.Crew with so much excess inventory that it had no choice but to revert to discounting,” while also mentioning that “many new strategies we deployed [under Brett] were ultimately not successful and negatively impacted our financial performance.”
Madewell, however, is still the internal rising tide: the rapidly growing sub-label generated $529.2 million in 2018 (a 26 percent increase over the previous year), and also opened eight new stores and added a men’s collection.
Unfortunately Madewell’s success is not enough to bolster the mainline, which is why the company is now working on “developing the store of the future,” which will allegedly be a “convenience-oriented, service-focused, digitally integrated extension of its retail strategy.” (If that sounds suspiciously ambiguous to you, you’ve got company.)
I mean, at this point, maybe just put the sick, sad, old bastard out of its misery?
You can read more about it at Fashionista.
