Luxury retailer Ralph Lauren has announced plans to shutter its Fifth Avenue flagship store in Manhattan amid falling sales and stagnant profits.
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The retailer will focus efforts on strengthening its e-commerce game in a $370M restructuring plan that will include job cuts and additional store closings. The changes include transitioning its online operations to a platform called Commerce Cloud through Salesforce.com, Bloomberg reports.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Chen Grazutis said Ralph Lauren’s Fifth Avenue store likely was not generating decent profits due to high rents and was becoming hard to justify. Upon announcement of the closure and job cuts, shares dropped 4% to $78.08 on Tuesday, the largest drop the luxury apparel brand has experienced in two months.
This move follows news that the company’s CEO, Stefan Larsson, will soon depart after butting heads with the company’s founder regarding a turnaround plan. In July, the retailer announced plans to shutter 50 stores and cut more than 1,000 jobs in a push to evolve following missed sales targets for the year; the Fifth Avenue store closure falls in line with that announcement.
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