High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. Jennifer Lopez helped Kohl’s, the US department store, lift its sales and profits in the past quarter as shoppers were attracted by a new line of clothes and jewellery endorsed by the singer and actress.
Department stores such as Kohl’s are signing deals to sell celebrity brands that are not available elsewhere as they struggle to maintain sales in the face of a slowdown in spending by middle-class customers.
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Kohl’s, a family-oriented chain not renowned for its glamour, reported a 20 per cent rise in net income to $211m from a year ago, while sales increased by 4 per cent to $4.4bn in the three months to October 29.
Kevin Mansell, Kohl’s chief executive, said the Jennifer Lopez brand – which launched in mid-September – had “met our very aggressive sales goals and exceeded the size of any previous brand launch by a substantial degree in sales”.Sears, the well-known but struggling department store chain, has an exclusive deal to sell a collection of clothes branded by the Kardashian sisters, the reality television stars.
JC Penney, a Kohl’s rival, has exclusive brands from Cindy Crawford, the former supermodel, while Kmart has products from Selena Gomez, an actress and singer. Walmart, the mass market discounter, has a line from Miley Cyrus, a teenage celebrity.
Ms Lopez, who was born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, is particularly popular among the US’s Hispanic population, which is increasingly being targeted as a growth market by retailers and consumer goods makers.Kohl’s pushed ahead with its launch of the products developed with Ms Lopez – also known as J-Lo – alongside a parallel set of goods branded by her husband, Marc Anthony, even though the couple announced in July that they would divorce after seven years of marriage.
Chris Donnelly, a senior executive in Accenture’s retail practice, said that although retailers shared profits with their celebrity partners, it was cheaper to associate with them than to build a brand from scratch.
But he added: “You see retailers working with a portfolio of celebrity brands because you mitigate the risk that … one gets in hot water.”
Mr Donnelly said that carrying exclusive brands from celebrities or fashion designers was helping department stores to reverse a drift towards homogeneity.
“There was an error in a lot of areas of retail where there was a tremendous sameness,” he said.
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