Fred Segal Opening Flagship in New Las Vegas Resort
Fred Segal is choosing Las Vegas as the next location for a new retail concept store.
The Los Angeles brand will open a mixed retail project, featuring men’s and women’s apparel and accessories with Fred Segal’s “shop-in-shop” concept, along with food and “pop culture,” in the new Resorts World property in Las Vegas. While the resort is still under construction, it is set to open this summer, and the new Fred Segal will open along with it.
More from WWD
This marks the second opening of a Fred Segal store since Global Icons took over the brand in 2019 and quickly opened a store in Malibu. Global Icons said at the time it was eager to expand the brand globally, but it has closed several stores, including three in Switzerland and one in Malaysia, going from nine locations to five. Fred Segal president John Frierson also recently left the company. Allison Samek is now president of the brand, moving down from her most recent role of chief executive officer.
Jeff Lotman, CEO of Global Icons and chairman of Fred Segal, said the store within Resorts World is a “collaboration,” not a lease, which was negotiated prior to the coronavirus pandemic. He did not elaborate on the particulars of the deal.
Of choosing Las Vegas for the next retail location, Lotman noted the city’s usual draw tourist, at least prior to the pandemic.
“We believe that the Las Vegas visitor, specifically the Resorts World visitor, aligns well with who our core customer is,” he said. “Similarly to Los Angeles, Las Vegas attracts tourists from all over the world and will be a perfect complement to our stores in Southern California.”
When it opens, the resort will hold 70,000 square feet of retail and more announcements on what brands will be there are expected in the coming months. Fred Segal will operate separate men’s and women’s locations, with certain brands set to offer goods that will be exclusive to the resort location. The stores will have more of a focus on “nightlife and evening apparel and accessories” that a typical Fred Segal store wouldn’t offer, Lotman said. As for the dining element, the brand will have a space for its Sundry Shop, offering drinks and snacks purportedly “inspired by the culture and lifestyle of Los Angeles.”
“It’s exciting to be able to bring such an iconic brand with a renowned global presence to our Resorts World Las Vegas retail portfolio,” said Scott Sibella, president of Resorts World.
The resort is a development by Genting Berhad, a multinational conglomerate based in Malaysia that operates casinos and resorts, but also has interests in palm oil plantations, oil and gas production and biotechnology.
Although shopping and tourism typically go hand in hand, physical retail and Las Vegas have been been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of store locations have closed in the last year, and tourism, the basis of the city’s economy, has plummeted. Major conferences, which Las Vegas has built itself for in the last decade, are still canceled, many until 2022. Concerts and other entertainment shows remain prohibited and while casinos technically reopened in the middle of last year, not all services have resumed and basic protections like crowd restrictions and mask wearing are enforced. Some resorts are still closed during the week and only open on weekends.
All this has resulted in millions fewer tourists visiting the city. According to an AP report earlier this month, only 19 million visitors came to Vegas in 2020, compared to almost 43 million the year before.
For More, See:
Feat Clothing Has Sights Set on Being the Next Lululemon
Fashion Nova Sees 300-Plus Workers Fall Ill With COVID-19
Philipp Plein Accused of Workplace Homophobia in Discrimination Lawsuit
Spring Looks and Pricey Shipping Containers at Louis Vuitton Men’s Pop-up
