Fred Segal’s stay in Santa Monica turned out to be short lived, with the boutique retailer closing after less than a year on Montana Avenue.
The retailer’s store was empty as of Wednesday, after sales were held in the days leading up to the closure.
Fred Segal opened the over 2,200-square-foot Santa Monica store in October as part of a retail expansion plan under parent Global Icons.
The Montana Avenue space is currently listed as a sublease available for a term through Jan. 31, 2029, according to leasing documents.
It’s unclear why the store was closed and what may be in the works for the rest of the Fred Segal fleet domestically.
An inquiry to Global Icons CEO Jeff Lotman on the Santa Monica store and the status of the five other Fred Segals was not returned Wednesday.
Fred Segal also operates a recently opened Fred Segal Home showroom at HD Buttercup in Culver City.
Among the other recent changes at the retailer was the departure earlier this month of Ash Petrie, who was most recently senior vice president of merchandising and had been with Fred Segal for eight years. Petrie has started a retail consultancy called Rode Studios, based out of Los Angeles.
Bottling a Lifestyle
Fred Segal started his namesake boutique in 1961, turning it into a launchpad for local labels, a place for Hollywood A-listers to shop and paved the way for the founding of the Ron Robinson and Ron Herman boutiques.
The brand’s ownership has changed hands over the past eight years, with each new leadership group looking to bottle Fred Segal’s secret sauce and scale it globally.
Those changes began with Sandow Media in 2012, when it paid for the rights to the brand. Two years later Sandow brought on Evolution Media Partners as an equity investor and tapped Paul Blum—the former CEO of Juicy Couture, David Yurman and Kenneth Cole—to lead the boutique retailer’s growth. That was most notably done with the 2017 unveiling of the company’s 21,000-square-foot lifestyle concept on Sunset Boulevard that aimed to weave fashion, entertainment, dining and wellness.
“The convergence of fashion, technology and media has created a great opportunity to leverage Fred Segal’s Southern California celebrity heritage,” Blum said in a statement at the time of his appointment.
Fred Segal aimed to open as many as 10 of the new lifestyle retail concepts domestically and overseas during a five- to seven-year period. Blum described the concept at the time as a “new and engaging customer experience in the luxury sector.”
A few years later, in 2019, Global Icons became a majority shareholder of Fred Segal, with Evolution retaining a minority share. Growth of the store fleet was again touted along with category expansion using Global Icons’ licensing expertise.
Said Lotman to Bloomberg at the time of the Global Icons’ acquisition, “We’ve been brand stewards for a long time, but I’ve always wanted to be a brand owner.”
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