The Sinking Saks

Saks May Have Sunk

The Slow, ‘Spectacled’ Fade of Saks Global

UPDATE 1/3/26- Saks Global CEO Mark Metrick has "stepped down" effective immediately...as in, "don't let the screen door hit you on your way out".

Saks Fifth Avenue never had to explain itself. It was the luxury retailer. Period. The lighting was flattering, the buyers had taste, and the bills (most importantly) were paid. Today, Saks (now called Saks Global) feels less like a luxury institution and more like a PowerPoint deck that never quite finished loading.

Saks Global, presided over by Mark Metrick, a man whose defining physical trait is his aggressively earnest, over-spectacled gaze, has become an unintentional metaphor for the entire operation: all optics, very little clarity. To be fair, luxury retail is a tough and ever changing game, especially department store luxury retail. Brands have decided to not only increase their on-line presence but expand brick-and-morter locations aggressively. To be unfair, it takes a special kind of leadership to turn one of America’s most storied luxury names into a whispered cautionary tale muttered between unpaid vendors and former employees updating their LinkedIn profiles. That’s Saks today.

As a supplier (I hate the word ‘vendor’) in the old days, getting into Saks meant you’d made it. In the current era, getting out before your balance sheet collapses is the real prize. If you talk with some of those suppliers, over a martini they’re paying for themselves … you’ll hear the same refrains: late payments that stretch from weeks into months and in some cases over a year. Invoices are aging like fine wine but without the resale value, and sudden “conversations” about revised terms always benefit Saks and mysteriously end with brands contemplating receivership. It’s not that Saks forced anyone into financial distress, it merely created an ecosystem where emerging and mid-sized luxury brands learned, the hard way, that exposure does not pay rent, payroll, or Italian factories. If survival became a math problem, then Saks is very bad at arithmetic.

If you walk the stores, you can see it. Less merchandise, hangers spaced arm lengths apart and a complete lack of sizing. This is not curated minimalism, this is absence masquerading as restraint. Racks are noticeably thin; floors feel hollow and entire categories seem missing. Real luxury is abundance edited by taste. Saks offers scarcity edited by cash flow. And the irony? At the exact moment Saks appeared to be forgetting how to merchandise luxury, Bloomingdale’s—yes, Bloomingdale’s, has quietly slipped on the crown.

While Saks Global was busy rebranding, restructuring, and explaining itself, Bloomingdale’s was doing something deeply unfashionable: selling clothes people wanted, making their stores look the part, paying its suppliers and maintaining those relationships as they shine.  Bloomingdale’s didn’t apply any pressure, it didn’t issue grand manifestos about “the future of luxury,” it simply showed up with product, relevance, and (brace yourself) inventory. Designers noticed. Shoppers noticed, and the results have offered them the podium. Bloomingdale’s has become the steady hand, the reliable partner, the place where luxury brands felt safer parking their goods. Saks, once the alpha, watched the crown slide off its head and roll down to 59th Street. Perhaps most telling is the shift in industry tone. Once upon a time, brands whispered nervously about Bloomingdale’s relevance. Now they speak about it with relief. It’s where collections land cleanly. Where replenishment happens and where growth feels possible again.

Nordstrom, long the service standard-bearer, found itself caught between identity and execution. Generational ownership happened when the Nordstrom family (with the help of Mexican billions) took it private…..again. Saks, meanwhile, chased reinvention through restructuring, branding exercises, and philosophical debates about the “future of luxury.” Bloomingdale’s skipped the manifesto and focused on the floor. It invested in merchants, built out designer spaces and empowered buyers. It remembered that luxury is tactile, emotional, and, yes, transactional, which means $$$.

As pressure mounted, Saks Global leaned into a familiar corporate reflex: optics over substance. New structures. New titles. New language and lots of promises. These are the same old problems, just described differently. There were desperate moves dressed up as bold innovation, partnerships announced with great fanfare and little follow-through, and cost-cutting exercises that somehow managed to save pennies while torching morale. Employees didn’t so much leave as evacuate. Talented merchants, operators, and creatives quietly slipped out, lured by competitors, startups, or the radical idea of being listened to. Institutional memory drained away, replaced by consultants and slide decks. Now it seems Saks will open a new department called Chapter 11.

The strangest part of the Saks Global saga is not that mistakes were made, it’s that belief evaporated. Leadership requires gravity. Authority. Trust. Somewhere along the way, Metrick’s reassurances stopped reassuring. His vision speeches inspired eyerolls instead of buy-in. In luxury, perception is reality, and the perception has become brutal. When vendors don’t believe you, employees don’t follow you, and customers don’t buy from you, the game is over.  Saks didn’t fall because luxury is dead. It fell because luxury cannot survive on spreadsheets alone. Luxury, it turns out, still runs on trust. Pay your vendors. Respect your merchants. Stock the damn shelves. Everything else is theater, and theater, as Saks Global has so painfully demonstrated, is a poor substitute for leadership.

While Bloomingdale’s reclaimed relevance by doing the unglamorous work of retail, Saks Global drifted. It has become rudderless, over-explained, and increasingly out of touch with the ecosystem that once made it powerful.

Some notable Quotables are:

“At some point you realize you’re not a partner—you’re the bank.”— Founder, leather goods brand

“They asked us to ship Spring while still owing us for Fall. That’s not optimism—that’s fantasy.”— Italian footwear manufacturer

“Saks loved to talk about partnership. The only partnership was us financing their inventory for free.”— Founder, independent luxury ready-to-wear label

So where do we go from here? Try Aventura Mall, The Americana in Manhasset, South Coast Plaza or Bal Harbour Shops, or better yet, the nearest Bloomingdales.