Bloomingdale's Expanding Bloomie’s Concept to West Coast
- Bloomingdale’s is opening its third small-format Bloomie’s location.
- The new store, located just north of downtown Seattle, will open later this year.
- Bloomie’s is part of Macy’s Inc.’s overall strategy to reformat its physical retail footprint.
Bloomingdale’s announced that it will open its small-format Bloomie’s concept in Seattle later this year, marking the first West Coast location for the smaller-footprint brand.
According to a Jan. 4 release, the new store will open sometime this year in University Village in the Ravenna neighborhood, which is north of downtown Seattle. The store will offer a “casual, contemporary and highly curated experience” for shoppers, which will include top brands for men and women across categories like apparel, accessories, beauty and gifts.
"We are thrilled to enter the Seattle market with the opening of our third Bloomie's location," said Charles Anderson, Bloomingdale’s director of stores, in the release. "The new flexible store experience has been well-received in other cities as it remains authentic to the Bloomingdale's brand yet brings a new and exciting energy to our shoppers. We can't wait to be a part of the community and for the people of Seattle to be a part of the Bloomie's story."
The location will be the third Bloomie’s store for the retailer. The first store opened in Virginia in 2021, and a location in Illinois opened last year. In addition to the Bloomie’s locations, Bloomingdale’s in total operates 34 department stores and 20 Bloomingdale's The Outlet locations across 14 states in the U.S. and two international stores in Dubai and Kuwait.
Retail Leader Pro visited the Bloomie’s store when it opened last year in the Westfield Old Orchard Mall in Skokie, Illinois — a suburb of Chicago. At around 51,000 square feet, the Chicago Bloomie’s store was about double the size of the retailer’s first small-format location in Fairfax, Virginia, not far outside of Washington, D.C. The retailer hasn’t yet specified the size of the Seattle store.
The Bloomie’s stores, as RL Pro previously reported, are part of parent company Macy’s Inc.’s overall “Polaris” strategy, which involves the closure of around 125 traditional Macy’s stores but expanding its off-price and off-mall retail formats, like Market by Macy’s and Macy’s Backstage. The Bloomingdale’s brand this year is celebrating its 150th anniversary.
Retailers across sectors — from Target, Best Buy and Ikea — have flirted with small-concept stores as a way to reach consumers in cities and other communities (like college campuses) where their traditional-sized stores are impractical. These small-format stores allow retailers to curate products tailored for the community that they’re in. But small-format stores don't always make sense for retailers in every scenario. Ikea, for example, shuttered two small-format stores in New York City last year, Retail Leader reported. While Target is continuing to open small-format locations, it late last year said it would focus on larger-format stores in the coming years to create, among other things, a larger fulfillment area in the back of the store.