Saks Fifth Avenue

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Saks Fifth Avenue

Type	Subsidiary of Saks Incorporated
Founded	1898 New York City, New York, USA
Headquarters	New York City, New York, USA
Industry	Retail
Products	Clothing, footwear, handbags, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.
Website	http://www.saksfifthavenue.com/

Saks Fifth Avenue is a chain of upscale American department stores that is owned and operated by Saks Fifth Avenue Enterprises (SFAE), a subsidiary of Saks Incorporated. It competes in the elite luxury department store market with Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys New York. Saks is headquartered in New York City.

Saks Fifth Avenue Enterprises (SFAE) consists of 54 Saks Fifth Avenue stores, 50 Saks Off 5th stores, 62 Club Libby Lu specialty stores, and saks.com.

1 History
2 Trivia and Pop Culture
3 Locations
4 External links

[edit] History

Saks Fifth Avenue logo used until 2007. The "new" replacement logo is actually a modification of an older logo Saks used until the mid-1990s.

Saks Fifth Avenue is the successor of a business founded in 1867 and incorporated in New York in 1902 as Saks & Company. In 1923 Saks & Co. merged with Gimbels Brothers, Inc., operating as a separate autonomous subsidiary. In 1924, Horace Saks and Bernard Gimbel opened Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City.

When Adam Gimbel became President of Saks Fifth Avenue in 1926, the company took on national aspirations. The very first branch store opened in 1926 in the city of Palm Beach, Florida as a resort store, followed by a Southampton resort store in 1928. The first full-line year-round Saks store was opened in Chicago in 1929, followed by another resort store in Miami Beach, Florida. In 1938 Saks expanded to the West Coast, opening in Beverly Hills. By the end of the 1930s Saks Fifth Avenue had a total of 10 stores, including resort locations such as Sun Valley, Mount Stowe and Newport. More full-line stores followed with Detroit in 1940, Pittsburgh in 1949. The company moved to its own freestanding location approximately one block from its former home in the Gimbel's flagship. The San Francisco location opened in 1952. More expansion followed in the 1960s.

BATUS Inc. acquired Gimbels Bros., Inc. and its Saks Fifth Avenue subsidary in 1973. In 1990, BATUS sold Saks to Investcorp S.A., which after investing the in the company and weathering the early 1990's recession took Saks public in 1996 as Saks Holdings, Inc. In 1998, Saks Holdings Inc. was acquired by Proffitt's, Inc.. Upon closing of the acquisition, Proffitt's changed its name to Saks Incorporated.

[edit] Trivia and Pop Culture

The flagship Saks Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan.

The New York flagship store accounts for 25% of the entire chain's annual revenue.
Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. A parody of this was played out in the movie White Chicks.
In the film Clueless, Saks was mentioned as one of Cher and Dion's favorite department stores.
In Shrek 2's Kingdom of Far Far Away, it is parodied as Saxon Fifth Avenue.
In the 2005 film adaptation of Steve Martin's novella Shopgirl, Claire Danes plays Mirabelle Buttersfield, an aspiring artist and sales associate at the infrequently visited gloves counter of the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue. Interestingly this was changed for the film; in the novella, Mirabelle works for Neiman Marcus.
In the 2004 movie Shall We Dance?, Susan Sarandon's character Beverly Clark works at Saks Fifth Avenue.
In the episode of the Simpsons when Lisa went shopping, she went to "Saks Fifth Grade."
In an episode of Seinfeld, Helen Seinfeld obtains a gift very valuable in the eyes of Cosmo Kramer, who asks her the source of the item. Helen replies "Saks Fifth Avenue in Florida," upon which Kramer says, "I'll remember that the next time I'm in Florida." Jerry responds sarcastically, saying, "Or if you're ever in Fifth Avenue here in the city."