The Future of Multi-Brand Retail: Can Independent Boutiques Save Luxury?
Multi-brand retailers once defined luxury shopping. Today, giants like Barneys, MatchesFashion, and Farfetch are strugglingc while independent boutiques are rising with curated experiences, local expertise, and customer obsession.
The multi-brand retail landscape in fashion is facing one of its most turbulent moments in decades. Once considered the heart of luxury shopping, department stores and online platforms that offered consumers a curated mix of labels are now struggling under the weight of debt, shifting consumer preferences, and heightened competition from direct-to-consumer channels.
Recent months have only intensified this upheaval. Canadian e-tailer Ssense is the latest to feel the pressure, following the collapse of industry players such as Barneys New York in 2019 and MatchesFashion in 2023. Meanwhile, giants like Saks Fifth Avenue have had to refinance billions in debt just to stay afloat.
The Domino Effect
The cracks in multi-brand retail began showing years ago. The fall of Barneys was an early warning that the model was under strain. Since then, the dominoes have kept falling:
MatchesFashion, once a London digital darling, shut down last year.
Farfetch, once valued as a Wall Street success story, narrowly avoided collapse after being acquired by South Korea’s Coupang — but only by shifting into what many consider a “grey market” model.
Saks Fifth Avenue, weighed down by $2.2 billion in debt, was forced to restructure its finances, raising doubts about the sustainability of luxury’s traditional department store model.
These examples highlight a market where long-standing players are struggling to balance the costs of scale with rapidly evolving consumer habits.
Why Consumers Are Moving Away
Shoppers today are less reliant on large multi-brand retailers and more drawn to direct brand channels and specialty boutiques. Independent retailers often deliver a sharper, more personal experience, while big platforms risk feeling impersonal and bloated.
As Molly Nutter, President of ByGeorge, notes:
“If you have companies headquartered in New York or Dallas, you have people trying to manage the experience in markets they don’t like or travel to very often. It becomes an uphill battle to create something special.”
Meanwhile, global retailers are rethinking their strategies. Olivier Bron, CEO of Bloomingdale’s, has stressed the importance of local focus:
“We’re ready to invest. Our biggest source of inspiration are local specialty retailers. They are very focused and are obsessed about their customer.”
The Balance of Efficiency and Discovery
Perhaps the most important challenge for multi-brand retailers is finding the sweet spot between convenience and serendipity. As Amanda McCormick Bacal, Global Head of Marketing at Joor, puts it:
“The best models are balancing efficiency with serendipity. The best models help customers find what they’re looking for quickly but also stumble upon something that maybe they didn’t know that they needed.”
This balance between efficient access to global brands and the excitement of discovery is what consumers increasingly expect from luxury retail.
What Comes Next?
The current wave of closures and restructurings signals not the death of multi-brand retail, but its reinvention. Independent boutiques are re-emerging as vital players, offering localised knowledge, curated experiences, and personal relationships with clients.
For large-scale players like Saks, Bloomingdale’s, or online platforms like Ssense, the challenge is clear: evolve towards customer-obsessed, experience-driven models or risk irrelevance in a luxury market that is fragmenting rapidly.
The future of multi-brand retail will depend on those who can blend scale with intimacy — delivering both the efficiency of global platforms and the magic of independent discovery.
