Posh Buckhead shopping center sinks to new low

The Shops Buckhead Atlanta, which opened in late 2014, will soon lose its fourth tenant of the year, and third retailer in just the past month!



On the heels of the quiet closures of both Helmut Lang and Denim & Soul, Scoop, a New York-based boutique is currently liquidating as it prepares to close.





Scoop, or Scoop NYC as it is known to some, was started by Stefani Greenfield and Uzi Ben-Avraham 20 years ago in New York City. Over the years, the chain grew to include a few locations in New York as well as satellite stores in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada and Texas. Scoop, w hich stocked both its own in-house label as well as other labels, is credited with helping to launch brands like Rag & Bone and Alice + Olivia. Scoop 's SoHo flagship recently closed, a nd WWD (W omen's Wear Daily) now report s the entire chain is closing.

Scoop ownership blamed "high rents" for their chain's closure. Currently, merchandise at all remaining st ores is 10-30% off (most only 10%) with sales expected to continue for the next four - seven weeks or until all in stock merchandise is sold. The 2500 square foot store in Buckhead open ed in the fall of 2014.



Denim & Soul, which c lo sed about a m onth a go , was another out of town bou tique that failed at the cen ter. Bu ckhead ar ea sources indicate emp lo yees showed up for work about a m onth ago only to find a c orporate tea m packing up the store and emp loyees were told the store was closed. Marcus Lemonis of CNBC' s The Prof it invested nearly a million dollars la st ye ar in the business, then k nown as The Blues Jeans Bar. Lemonis rebrand ed the boutique "Denim & Soul" and worked t o increase the margins at the chain's then three locations (Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco). Lady Fuller, the bouti que's founder, h ad thirteen stores at the height of her business, but as she conf essed to Lem onis, s he never understood the markets , and only three of the stor es were profitable. With Le mon is financially invested in the c ompan y with a 50% stake and the authority to ma ke al l business decisions, it ' s amazing to see the com pany make similar mistak es. The Atlanta location of Denim & Soul opened this past December, and according to sources at the Buckhead property, didn't even last four months. The chain did add other locations in both Lake Forest and Deerfield, Illinois as well as Jacksonville, Florida, which recently opened.

Former Denim & Soul

Helmut Lang, a division of Japan-based Link Theory has also closed . Helmut Lang, rumored to be on life support virtually s ince op ening, also quie tly closed a bout a week ago . With a very nic he ma r ket and premi um pricing, th e store failed to r esonate with th e Atlanta consumer. Industry sources indic ate th at th e cl osu re of sibling brand Theory, also in The Shops Buckhead Atlanta, may not be far behind. If th e store does close, it would mark The ory's second c losure in the market, having previously closed a sto re in Phipps Plaza.

Former Helmut Lang

Despite the recent openings of Lindbergh, COS, Kit & Ace and N ARS cosme tics, and the upcoming o penings of Dior and Flywhee l, industry sources report that wor d is spreading that The Shops Buckhead Atlanta is a "disaster."













Brunello Cucinelli, a luxury store in th e project , has repo rtedly gone weeks at a time with out a single sale. Likely due to this, the company recently released their General Manager, Jon Falk, who ha d been hired aw ay from Zeg na in Lenox Square. The store is report edly no w working with a s keleton staff of only three assoc iates.

Taver na was recently announced as the replace ment to the failed Thirteen Pies, but I seriously do u bt it fares much better.





Qing Mu and Doraku, two Asian restaurants locate d on the E ast Paces Ferry side of the project, ar e also report edly st ruggling .

Sou rces indicate that the only real successful tenants in the project a re Hermes (no surpr ise), Akris (some what surprising), Christian Louboutin (home of th e red bottom heels) and Le Bilboquet (which despite recen tly losing its GM and promo ting i ts maitre d' has not lost a beat). Shake Sh ack, which starte d out red hot, ha d reportedly cool ed significant ly , only re cently starting to show improvements in overall sales.





id by A Soc ial Mess ? P erhaps not . ! Should ownership follow the blueprint la In my opinion, yes x? ta rethink its tenant mi Should The Shops Buckhead Atlan





The latest traffic generating attem pt on behalf o f the c enter, "The Market," is a weekl y Sunday morning / afternoon event tha t is ess entially a mini farmers market. Meant as a way to generate foot traffic for the center, sou rces indicate it has , but after two weeks, many report only slight improvements w hile others rep ort no difference at all.





Is parking still your bigge st grievance at The Shops Buckhead Atlanta? A re you surpr ised to see so many tenants closing? What could ownership do to make visiti ng The Shops Buckhead Atlanta more compe lling?



