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NEW YORK -- One of the most daring -- and expensive -- experiments in beauty retailing will end with the click of a lock on Aug. 31 when Sephora closes its 21,000-square-foot Rockefeller Center flagship.
The French beauty retailer will announce today that it has assigned the lease of the huge store to French fashion retailer Faconnable, which is owned by Nordstrom.
Sephora, a division of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, did not disclose the terms. But executives described the move Monday as part of Sephora's new strategy of focusing on smaller, more productive formats, while continuing to develop its remaining 71 American stores. David Suliteanu, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. wing of Sephora, stated that "Sephora continues to achieve outstanding sales growth across the U.S. We remain on track to achieve our near-term objective of positive operating profit and cash flow in 2003."
The comment exuded the same optimism that Suliteanu had voiced in a May 24 interview, during which he said that plans were in the works to scale back the Rockefeller Center unit from three floors to two. Sephora, which has been racked by reports of huge losses and rumors of a possible sale of both the U.S. and European divisions, has struggled for some time with Rockefeller Center. Touted as "a world-class flagship" when it opened Oct. 14, 1999, the Rockefeller Center flagship was estimated by industry sources to cost $30 million to build, with expectations of doing well in excess of $20 million in annual retail...