PRINT THIS STORY:

CHANGE TEXT SIZE:

BARGAIN BAGS

Spain’s Misako brings affordable chic handbags to U.S.

BY ED McKINLEY

Misako, a Spanish retailer that specializes in “affordable chic” cloth handbags selling for $32 each, regardless of size or style, is looking for landlords in fashion-forward big cities and tourist destinations in the United States.

Over the next year the chain’s U.S. branch, Misako USA, intends to open 15 to 25 brightly lit, almost totally white, minimalist-looking boutiques measuring from 500 to 1,200 square feet. About 70 percent of the shops will be in malls, and the rest on urban commercial streets.

Misako’s selection of handbags, which make up 85 percent of the merchandise, will change rapidly as new collections rotate into the shops, generating repeat visits. The remaining 15 percent of the stock is in accessories, including men’s briefcases, women’s belts, sunglasses, backpacks, jewelry and watches.

At press time Misako had opened two stores in Chicago, its base of U.S. operations, and signed seven other leases in the Windy City and its suburbs. In addition, the company had signed leases at Fashion Show mall, Las Vegas, and Mall of America, Bloomington, Minn. It was also negotiating for space in metro New York City and planning to enter Florida and California.

Misako (the name is a play on the Spanish words mi saco, meaning “my sack”) is joining a parade of European merchants selling high fashion at low prices in the United States. Apparel retailers H&M, Mexx and Zara are outfitting Americans in clothes that rival the trendiness of designer-label offerings but cost so little that some retail analysts refer to them as “throwaways.”

“The timing is great,” says Misako USA President Javier Capella of his chain’s entry into the U.S. market. “America has accepted concepts like Ikea, Zara and H&M, in which you see merchandise, you like it, you buy it and you [replace] it without really thinking about it.”

Observers of the American retail scene say a value-price handbag and accessories chain with European flair could succeed in this country. (Misako was so new to these shores at press time, however, that retail experts contacted by SCT had not heard of the chain and could offer only general comments.)

“Handbag-focused stores tend to do really well, based on Coach’s experience,” said Heather E. Brilliant, a retail analyst at Chicago-based independent research firm Morningstar. “Coach has been gobbling up that market with their classic styles, and now they’re coming out with more seasonal products as well. It seems like a very reasonable strategy for Misako to go into that kind of market.”

Still, good pricing and good products are only two legs of the three-legged stool of handbag retailing, cautions Lois Huff, a senior vice president at Columbus, Ohio, consulting firm Retail Forward. The third leg, she says, is the brand — a key factor in handbags.

“A lot of the credibility of the brand comes from where it’s sold, and so a lot of handbags are sold at upmarket retailers,” Huff said. Image means so much in the handbag business that Misako is taking a risk opening stores here without an established name, she adds.

“You’re sending a message to the world with your handbag,” said Huff. “It’s a lot more visible than a lot of clothing is. To people who buy Coach and designer-brand purses, that label says something. Style is important, but label is probably even more important in what it’s saying about that user.”

Now women have something to go with all that highly styled but low-priced apparel from such European “cheap chic” stores as H&M and Zara. The handbags, displayed in Misako’s brightly lit, white stores, look pricey — until you look at the price tags.

The $32 price point puts Misako in line with what shoppers expect to pay for bags at Target, Huff says, but she notes that affordable-chic retailers have to exercise caution in site selection. “H&M has its flagships in Manhattan,” she said, “but it’s really more a typical suburban mall kind of player; same thing with Forever 21. They may go into some of the better malls, but their bread-and-butter business is with the average consumer.”

Capella says he expects his wares to appeal to a broad spectrum of shoppers. He predicts that trend-driven 14-to-20-year-olds will drop by the shop every Friday to see the new merchandise. Professionals will buy handbags that look like Coach, only more fashionable, he says. Older women, fresh from buying a new dress, will select a bag to match without having to spend $200 or $300 for it, says Capella. The merchandise mix will vary, depending upon the demographics and taste of each store’s clientele.

Each year Misako’s busy five-person design team comes up with 200 collections — groups of bags in a single style. Capella says Coach offers 60 to 70 collections annually. “So we introduce new collections every week, and in 21 days we pretty much have a brand-new store of merchandise,” he said. All the bags are manufactured in Misako’s own factories.

A typical Misako shop might display 30 collections, or about 200 handbags, at any given time, and a special window display heralds the introduction of each collection. Price tags on tiny stands, nearly all saying $32, pepper the shop windows. A few accessories interspersed among the bags are marked with lower price tags, such as a necklace for $22.

Collections of $32 bags are grouped on white shelves with recessed lighting along the sides of the shop. Leather handbags at prices ranging from $42 to $130 are shown against a darker background at the back of the store. The lowest price in the store is $8 for a small makeup bag.

Muted late-fall colors predominated in the merchandise at the November opening of the first U.S. store, at Chicago’s Water Tower Place in the retailing mecca of North Michigan Avenue. But a bright, op art selection and a collection in a subtler shade of orange found an audience too, sales associates said.

Floral arrangements serve as centerpieces. Bright white predominates — white paint covers walls, shelves, ceilings and other fixtures. Even the floor is white, covered in large pieces of limestone. Sales associates, meanwhile, stand out in their all-black outfits.

“I thought the feeling was quite nice,” said a Chicago shopper who identified herself only as Courtney as she left the store. And the merchandise? “Very reasonably priced,” she said.

Such comments, passed from one woman to another, should bring in customers, says Capella. “When people come to our store and they see a handbag and the price is $32, and they see another one in the same collection that’s three times as big with a little bit different design and that’s $32 too, they tell their friends,” he said.

Capella says he’s convinced that Americans are ready for the right kind of bargain. “I think [there is] a little bit of price-conscious mood in the United States,” he said. “It’s OK if you don’t spend a lot of money, as long as you get a high-quality, fashion-forward product.”

To help promote the fashion aspect of the merchandise, the retailer placed ads in the November and December issues of CS (Chicago Social) magazine, a thick monthly distributed free in downtown Chicago hotel rooms and curbside boxes.

Free magazine or not, Misako’s one-page black-and-white ad in the November issue sets the store among some flashy company. An article on crocodile-hide handbags and accessories, for example, mentions a clutch costing $6,900 at Gucci.

The ad carries the slogan, “Misako: Bags to have or to have more,” a phrase some might guess came from a Zen monastery rather than Madison Avenue.

The ad also touts the other Misako locations, though most had not opened by the time the magazine came out.

Soon after the first U.S. unit opened in The Rouse Co.’s Water Tower Place, the store in the North Avenue Collection opened. North Avenue Collection is a mixed-use project that Chicago-based Hirsch Associates designed for Centrum Properties, also of Chicago. The project is on the edge of the city’s affluent Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Another shop was scheduled at press time to open in December in Hawthorn Center, operated in the Chicago suburb of Vernon Hills by Westfield America Trust.

The company has more plans for the area. A store is scheduled to open early this year at Taubman Centers’ Woodfield Mall, in the northwest suburb of Schaumburg. Slated for June are openings at Rouse’s Oakbrook (Ill.) Center and Westfield’s Fox Valley Mall, in the western suburb of Aurora.

In September Misako is to open two more Chicago-area stores, in Westfield’s Old Orchard Center, Skokie, and in Orland Square Mall, a center in Orland Park run by Simon Property Group.

Then there are the tourist-oriented units slated to open early this year at Rouse’s Fashion Show and Mall of America.

“When we go into a market, with the exception of our tourist locations, we want a minimum of four to six stores in the metropolitan area,” Capella said.

“We are big fans of street locations, especially in Spain, where the weather is mild,” he said, though acknowledging that mall locations will predominate in the United States because of the demands of the market.

Misako, which has its headquarters in Barcelona, Spain, began 2003 with 32 stores worldwide and closed the year with 60. The chain operates boutiques not only in Spain, but also Germany, the Netherlands, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. Plans call for a total of 100 shops by the end of this year, says Capella.

The company was started in 1952 as a manufacturer and wholesaler of handbags, under the name Frag Comercio Internacional. Frag turned out merchandise for Spanish department store chain El Corte Inglés and fashion chains Inditex Group and Mango, as well as Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue. But when the company was remade in 1999 as Misako, it ceased supplying other retailers.

Mario Coll, 44, son of Frag’s founder, launched Misako; his wife, Montse del Tarre, is chief designer. Under their guidance, Capella foresees prosperity for the chain in America.

After all, he says, “every woman loves a handbag.”

© 2008 ICSC. All rights reserved. | Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Contact ICSC | ICSC Home |