Fashion Show mall ignited retail explosion in Las Vegas

It’s ReCon week in Las Vegas.

That means 36,000 retail experts, from real estate brokers to store managers to designers, are in town through Thursday, making new connections and striking deals for new leases.

Local retail observers argue none of those professionals would be here this week if it weren’t for the retail project that started it all: Fashion Show mall, and its Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue anchors in particular.

“It can be easy to overlook Fashion Show today just because there’s so much on the Strip, but I don’t think anything else gets built without the success of it, and the success of Neiman Marcus and its other iconic anchors,” said Matt Bear, a vice president specializing in retail with commercial brokerage CBRE Las Vegas. “Without Fashion Show, the Forum Shops at Caesars don’t get built. It just cascaded from there.”

It continues to cascade, even for Fashion Show itself. ReCon is an annual excuse for the Strip’s big retail centers to highlight new tenants and entertainment programming as they look to top each other in the resort corridor’s shopping arms race. The mall that started it all is no different: Through 2016, the 1.9 million-square-foot Fashion Show will add 24 new stores, expansions or relocations totaling more than 58,000 square feet. As with its first anchors, some of the mall’s tenants will be new to the Las Vegas Valley.

“We are always trying to move the dial forward on bringing our guests the most current and relevant retail and dining found anywhere,” said Janet LeFevre, senior marketing manager with General Growth Properties, which owns the shopping center. “One of our driving core philosophies for these properties is to be fresh, new, first-to-market and dynamic at all times.”

Fashion Show was fresh from its beginning.

‘NOTHING HERE BEFORE THAT’

The property opened on Valentine’s Day 1981 as the city’s first luxury retail center. With Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, tourists and Las Vegans alike had their first local opportunity to buy big designer names such as Chanel, Prada, Balenciaga, Chloe and Missoni.

Terri Monsour, Neiman Marcus’ local public relations manager during the launch, recalled how sales of the store’s Chanel handbags immediately “exploded,” and spurred additional lines including clothing and shoes. Locals who once had to fly to San Francisco or Los Angeles to buy high-end brands suddenly had a source here. In short order, Fashion Show’s Neiman Marcus store ranked in the chain’s top 10 for sales, Monsour said.

Bear remembers his grandmother hitting up Fashion Show’s debut.

“Everyone was showing up for that opening. Before that, this was a literal and figurative desert of retail,” he said. “There was nothing here before that. Its success led to the development of other retail on the Strip. That’s not debatable.”

Designers that found success inside Neiman Marcus and Saks decided to take an even bigger gamble on the Strip: They began opening standalone stores in the 1990s. Today, Chanel has four boutiques and Louis Vuitton has six stores along the resort corridor — a concentration neither retailer comes close to matching in any other market in the world.

“Today, Las Vegas has the finest retail in three miles of anywhere in the world,” said Monsour, who’s now senior vice president of retail for Caesars Entertainment. “I can’t think of any major designer that is not here.”

The Strip’s retail renaissance had some help from outside factors, Bear said.

For one thing, it’s more fun to shop on vacation. It’s also more fun to shop “when you have money,” he said. “It goes along with the gambler’s mentality.”

Also people aren’t gambling all day anymore, and they need a diversion.

“Retail on the Strip is great theater,” he said.

But keeping those audiences coming requires greater theatrics than ever, and Fashion Show, which must compete against competitors for which it led the way, has plans to go bigger on both its retail and entertainment.

MORE ADDITIONS IN THE WINGS

Among the 24 new stores Fashion Show will add in 2016 include first-in-market locations for Under Armour and Keiko Cosmetics. The Shark Daymond John store, a limited, first-of-its-kind pop-up store, will sell items from contestants on ABC’s “Shark Tank” business-competition show.

Fashion Show also snagged Tadashi Shoji, a women’s fashion boutique, from the Forum Shops, where it had been for more than 10 years.

The boutique’s namesake creator said he relocated to Fashion Show to “further build brand awareness and better serve our clientele.”

The additions come on top of big changes in entertainment programming. The center refashioned its “front door” on the Strip with a 30,000-square-foot Zara store, seven freestanding boutiques and 120-foot-tall, high-definition digital signs with artistic videos and retailer ads.

And in celebration of ReCon, Fashion Show through May 30 is dedicating the 80-foot retractable runway in its Great Hall to performances every half hour in the busy middle of the day. On tap are digital dance shows, live music, performance art and fashion shows featuring 10 of the mall’s retailers. The shopping center will mount 132 performances in all through the end of the month.

“During ReCon, we always want to position ourselves in the best light,” LeFevre said. “It’s always great to put our best foot forward with the trade show, which then goes into Memorial Day weekend — the kickoff of summer in our city.”

Retailers — department stores such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue — will always need to look for ways to do more, Bear said.

“Somehow, they have to make it cool to go to a department store,” he said. “When a retailer gets beyond 30 or 40 locations, there’s this feeling they’re no longer cool anymore. For all traditional retail, there’s a struggle for relevancy. They can do it, but they have to figure out ways to be engaging the minute people walk in the door. If you’re not constantly innovating, someone else will put you out of business.”

Monsour said she says both anchors have new technologies that will keep them “very relevant,” including mirrors that let customers record and send pictures of potential outfits to friends.

“Those kinds of things will keep them incredibly relevant,” she said.