Where $700 Million Saks Global Left On The Table Is Headed, Part 5

“There’s a huge opportunity in this luxury space as Saks Global sputters, for specifically Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom and the specialty store community,” Tom Ott, the former SVP and GMM at Saks Fifth Avenue who spent 24 years there, told me over Zoom. TD Cowen analyst Oliver Chen estimates approximately $700 million in market share is now up for grabs as Saks Global’s 70-store portfolio contracts through bankruptcy. Nordstrom holds the biggest customer overlap at 25%, followed by Bloomingdale’s at 22% and Macy’s at 20%.

Several months before the Saks Global bankruptcy filing, a Bloomberg analysis found Saks Fifth Avenue sales fell 16% year-over-year at the end of Q2 2025, with June alone down 28%. A combined Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman dropped 10% for the quarter. In the same period, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom each grew more than 10%, with Bloomingdale’s posting a 13% gain in June alone.

“Nordstrom’s doing a better job, in my opinion, just as a consumer,” Lindsay Nahmiache, CEO of Veriphy Skincare told me. “It’s a little bit more polished, a little more aspirational. I think it’s higher end than I feel like Neiman’s is, in my mind, between the two.”

She described Nordstrom in Los Angeles as “the Apple of retailing:” bright, elevated, with a cafe and a more luxurious experience than the Neiman Marcus near her. Meanwhile, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d set foot in a Saks.

“Nordstrom is already on the branded, better-quality side of things,” Peter Smith, vendor and retail consultant and principal partner of The Retail Smiths, told me. “There’s no great mountain for Nordstrom to climb.”

Nordstrom has long emphasized service, loyalty and a tight feedback loop between digital and stores, supported by leaders who, as Ott notes, still behave like merchants. “I send Pete Nordstrom a note, he responds in like 10 minutes, in a great manner. These are people that are in tune.”

But let’s not count Macy’s, Inc, who owns Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, out quite yet in the $700 million money grab. Chanel, Saks Global’s largest unsecured creditor, has opened a three-story shop-in-shop at Bloomingdale’s 59th Street and allegedly recruited staff away from Bergdorf Goodman. Placer.ai foot traffic data showed Saks Fifth Avenue visits down 5.7% for all of 2025 and 4% in December alone, while Neiman Marcus fell 4.6% for the year and a steep 11.7% in December, of all months. Bloomingdale’s bucked the luxury department store trend with +4.2% growth for the full year.

Macy’s has always been more disciplined on vendor terms, less reliant on consignment structures, and faster to lean into online marketplace models allowing brands to drop-ship while Macy’s curates and aggregates demand without owning inventory. And in 2023, when real estate investors who didn’t understand the consumers’ passionate pursuit of luxury came calling, Macy’s leadership smartly locked its doors.

What Saks Global Should Have Learned from Macy’s Board

“So the guy Tony Spring came in,” Ott said of Macy’s, Inc chairman and CEO. “He’s awesome. Tony was the head of Bloomingdale’s, and they put him in at Macy’s. He’s logical, a good thinker. He changed things in a year. And he took them from awful to having positive comps and a growth proposition. And it’s all about being a great merchant and a great leader.”

Between late 2023 and July 2024, Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital made a series of escalating bids to take Macy’s private, beginning at $21 per share (roughly $5.8 billion) and climbing to $24.80 per share, or approximately $6.9 billion. Arkhouse is a real estate-focused investor, and industry analysts widely interpreted the deal as a bid to monetize Macy’s property portfolio, estimated at between $5 billion and $9 billion. Retail Dive compared the approach to Sears’ slow deterioration under Eddie Lampert. Or more à propos for this series, what Richard Baker did to Hudson’s Bay Company and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Macy’s board rejected every offer because the financing structure proposed asset-based lending tied to Macy’s own real estate. The board went “well beyond what is customarily required” for a public‑company acquisition by extensively opening its books, providing store-by-store P&Ls, full leases, and management access. What came back was a “check-in letter” with conditional, unsigned financing drafts. In plain English, these people wanted to leverage Macy’s real estate to buy Macy’s real estate.

The board drew a line and held. By December 2025, Macy’s stock was up more than 30% YTD. Bloomingdale’s reported an 8.6% increase in net sales for Q3 2025, its fifth consecutive quarter of comparable sales growth and the strongest performance in 13 quarters. The “Bold New Chapter” strategy Spring outlined in a January 2026 investor letter prioritized revitalizing 150 Macy’s locations while investing in Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, illustrating how retail-led renewal creates more durable value than asset stripping.

“Today, that work is centered on disciplined execution and continuous improvement, with strategic investments that are guided by what customers value most,” Spring wrote. “I am confident that, even when our work requires difficult decisions, we will continue to move Macy’s, Inc. forward, delivering for our customers and shareholders.”

Bob Phibbs, CEO of The Retail Doctor, praised Spring’s clear-eyed leadership to me via Zoom. “Tony Spring’s doing a great job at Macy’s, he’s reinventing the brand, he’s got his 150,” he said. “You don’t have to be this corporate raider to do this.”

Saks Global’s CEO Says Vendors Are Coming Back. Are They?

“Karmically, I don’t know if Saks will make it, because they have not been behaving with integrity,” Pollet forecasted. Saks’s financial relationship with vendors has frayed as chargebacks (fees for supposed violations of shipping manuals or packaging rules) moved from occasional nuisance to what Pollet characterized as a structured revenue stream. “Chargebacks were basically like, you have the shipping manual, right? And then if you don’t meet certain requirements in the shipment, it was starting to become a line item of theirs where they were also making money.”

Small brands couldn’t afford the squeeze. “So, not only were they asking you for, let’s say, a 60% discount – not your regular wholesale price – but a lower price, but then also, on top of that, I’m going to layer some chargebacks on there. So now you’re really not making money,” Pollet explained. Vendor tension translated into thinner assortments, out-of-stocks, slower deliveries and a cloud of uncertainty over which stores would survive. Saks Global properties became a less reliable place for customers to get their favorite brands.

“I saw a shabby-looking store,” former style adviser at Saks Chicago John McBarron told me. “It just seemed like we didn’t have any money. Certain things would go unaddressed — fixturing and stuff like that. I just felt like we looked like the reason that people were asking, are we going out of business? I just don’t think we presented well.”

Analysts estimate roughly 20 of the group’s approximately 70 department stores are likely to close in bankruptcy. The long-revered Horchow Collection, founded in 1971 as the first luxury mail-order catalog and moved online to Horchow.com after the 1988 Neiman Marcus Group acquisition, has already been folded into NeimanMarcus.com.

Geoffroy van Raemdonck, the new Saks Global CEO and former Neiman Marcus Group CEO just prior to the Saks and Neiman merger, was brought back to clean up the mess his successors left behind. He released a statement on LinkedIn claiming vendors were coming back. According to his post, Saks Global has drawn down approximately $825 million of its committed $1.75 billion financing package since mid-January, with another $300 million tranche expected in the coming weeks.

“We have executed, or are near execution of, agreements with leading luxury conglomerates and independent brands across all categories,” Van Raemdonck wrote, adding the company received a “strong show of support from partners” at its second day hearing in bankruptcy court. He noted more than 380 brands have resumed shipping, releasing roughly $1.2 billion in retail receipts, with weekly inventory receipts up 30% over the prior year. It remains to be seen how luxury customers will respond.

Three Futures for Saks Global and Only One Requires Actual Luxury Retailing

One of Richard Baker’s critical mistakes, besides thinking Amazon Prime is what luxury needed, was seeing similarity between Saks and Neiman Marcus as reason to merge. He underestimated the possibility of cannibalization as customers accustomed to going to either for different reasons would be forced to choose one or the other in major cities where both existed. This would have been the likely result under his “one team, three brands” vision, which failed to account why the two brands competed in the first place. With Baker no longer at the helm, what comes next for Saks Global?

Restructuring attorney Sidney Scheinberg, who represents jewelry vendors caught in the Saks Global filing, told me he believes the bankruptcy plan will ultimately get approved and the company won’t liquidate. “I think it makes more sense for the vast majority of creditors, the employees, and everything else not to convert this to a liquidation,” he said. But surviving bankruptcy and rebuilding a luxury business are two very different things, leaving three plausible futures.​

The first is cosmetic restructuring, a financial reorg addressing debt but changing nothing fundamental business operations. With the disclosed $1.75 billion in committed capital, the company emerges leaner, closes 20 or more stores, shutters most of Saks Off 5th, and declares victory.

Phibbs is skeptical. “They got this giant loan, great,” he said, “but they’ve saddled that company now with a hell of a lot more debt, again, and you’ve got the guy in charge of the last two bankruptcies in charge of the third one. What could go wrong?” Van Raemdonck led the previous bankruptcies. This path may lead slowly to a Sears-style fade.

The second scenario is radical simplification. “I would position Saks as opening price point luxury,” Ott laid out his vision. “Neiman’s, one step up with the pure luxury players; Bergdorf, the ultimate pinnacle. Then I would concentrate on new brands. I would reserve 30% of my open-to-buy dollars for new brands, and I would focus on that with each of these tiers to create a reason for being.”

Ott’s perspective is a merchant’s answer, with clear segmentation, discovery-driven assortment, and buyer expertise creating genuine differentiation. This path requires a leadership willing to prioritize stakeholders over stockholders, restoring institutional talent like Larry Bruce and John Cruz, who were expelled by the old guard in favor of “strategic realignment.”

To Ott’s merchant framework, I’d add rather than closing Saks Off 5th, let it compete directly with The TJX Company. Baker accurately saw TJX’s disciplined success in curating off-price business for the luxury aware. He just didn’t grasp the discount-motivated shopper who is happily being served by TJX’s stores are going after the sloppy seconds Saks Global customers rejected.

I’d also recommend to stop forcing e-commerce to compete with brick and mortar. Both can exist in their own unique lanes. Restore the reasons Neiman’s and Saks customers happily lost afternoons in stores and keep e-commerce a broad marketplace model, where untested luxury brands have a chance to prove their traction before being brought onto the sales floor. In-store remains tradition, e-commerce becomes discovery.

Van Raemdonck’s return suggests this may be plausible. Whether the debt load and creditor dynamics allow it is another question entirely.

The third scenario is the break-up. Scheinberg suggested that, as a standalone, Bergdorf Goodman makes more sense than as part of a debt-laden parent. “I think the value of that’s probably greater than the other stores,” he said. “And that’s certainly still a viable place.” According to WWD, Saks Global has already explored a minority stake sale of Bergdorf Goodman at a reported $1.5 billion to $2 billion valuation.

Sell or spin it off and let it be rebuilt by an owner who thinks more like Stanley Marcus, who understood luxury was never transactional. Could that be Bernard Arnaut? It’s a well-documented open secret in the luxury world LVMH (and occasionally Richemont or Kering) eyes Bergdorf’s as the ultimate US foothold, especially given their acquisition of Tiffany & Co.

Younger members of the Goodman family, who own the Fifth Avenue real estate, are reportedly open to a sale of the property, which would make the asset far more attractive. Under this model, Neiman Marcus could potentially be pried away and repositioned independently, while whatever remains of Saks Fifth Avenue carries a realistic identity instead of pretending to be something it stopped being years ago.

Commenting on Van Raemdonck’s LinkedIn post, Curtis Fuller, associate attorney at Romano Law PLLC, suggested a compromise between two and three. “Saks Global should spin off the Saks, Neiman’s, and Bergdorf flagship locations as employee-owned co-ops and keep the remaining national operations. This is the only way to ensure these institutions of American retail culture survive another collective 348 years.”

Can Saks Global Simplify Its Way Back to Luxury?

Nahmiache is optimistic about Saks specifically, if they make radical changes. “Saks has such a strong brand name, regardless of brand feels, people look at it and they trust it, it’s got prestige,” she says. “If they pivot correctly, I think that they could come out of this incredibly successful for a more modern generation.”

And if not, there are other luxury retailers waiting in the wings, ready to claim the luxury retailer throne Saks Global abdicated. Nordstrom is hiring marquee stylists like Catherine Bloom away from Neiman Marcus and building client-experience hubs. Bloomingdale’s is absorbing Chanel shop-in-shops and posting growth over five consecutive quarters.

And as WWD’s Evan Clark noted, “Look at Dillard’s Inc., a retailer that is decidedly less sexy than Saks or Neiman’s or Bergdorf’s, but never got too fancy with its real estate or sold it off. The retailer is currently worth $10 billion.”

The death of the luxury department store has been greatly exaggerated; it’s the death of the disconnected retailer Saks Global became we’re witnessing. As Phibbs reminded me, 83% of retail sales are still conducted within four walls. The throne hasn’t disappeared. It’s simply being reclaimed by those who remember in the world of luxury, you can’t sell a merchant’s soul for a real estate play and expect the customer to keep the change.