Children’s Place are planning to reduce its store network by a third.
“This initiative will greatly reduce our reliance on our brick-and-mortar channel and we are targeting our mall-based, brick-and-mortar portfolio to represent less than 25% of our revenue entering fiscal 2022,” said Jane Elfers, president and CEO. “Our fleet optimization initiative has been a decade-long strategic focus that has resulted in optimum flexibility in our lease terms, enabling us to significantly accelerate store closures without financial penalty.” (The retailer has closed 275 locations since it announced the initiative in 2013.)
“Our digital transformation has been supported by accelerated investments over the past three years enabling us to achieve one of the highest digital penetrations in the industry at 31% of revenue for fiscal 2019,” said Eifers. “These digital investments have allowed us to operate at a high level during the current crisis, with the ability to fulfill our outsized online demand through our advanced omnichannel capabilities. We believe that our strong digital foundation, coupled with the rapidly changing shopping patterns of our consumer, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our strong value proposition and our core, digital-savvy, millennial customer, will result in the continued acceleration of our digital revenue.”
