Fortunoff Resurrection Impending

Fortunoff's, which was a landmark housewares and jewelery store in the New York City metro area entered bankruptcy last year and ceased doing business.

Well, a bunch of former Fortunoff executives, including Isadore Mayrock who was related to founder Max Fortunoff, and a Texas based patio furniture business is bringing back the Fortunoff store name and will be opening stores in several areas around the region. It will focus exclusively on patio furniture and Christmas decorations depending on time of year.

Merkur, a Fortunoff merchandising executive for 39 years, created Furniture concepts with another former Fortunoff executive, Bernard Sensale. Isidore Mayrock, a member of the Fortunoff founding family, and David Barish, president of The Chair King, a Houston-based chain of 18 stores, signed on as investors. Merkur and Sensale also worked out a deal with the Fortunoff family to license the Fortunoff Backyard Store name, and to use a database of former Fortunoff customers.

Two of the seven stores will open in their former locations. Fortunoff liquidated all of its stores in early 2009, after filing for bankruptcy for the second time in two years. Merkur said the company plans to open an additional three to five stores a year going forward.

The Totowa store, located on Route 46 in a 12,000-square-foot former Coconuts music store, is scheduled to open Saturday. The Paramus store is expected to open Feb. 9. The 19,000-square-foot Paramus site is located directly across Route 17 from the former Fortunoff Backyard Store, in a building that recently housed a Harrow’s furniture store.

There will be four Backyard Stores in New Jersey, and three on Long Island. The other New Jersey locations will be in Eatontown and Menlo Park.

Merkur said the company has been able to rehire close to 70 former Fortunoff employees for the new venture. All seven stores will be headed by the same managers who formerly worked at the backyard stores near the new locations.

Barish of The Chair King said he didn’t hesitate when offered a chance to invest in a new Fortunoff backyard chain.

“Marty Merkur and I have known each other for at least 20 years,” said Barish. “When the opportunity became available to bring [Fortunoff Backyard Store] back, he called me and we jumped on it because we knew the team, we knew the name, we knew the potential of the marketplace.”

Merkur said the Fortunoff patio business, at its peak in 2007-2008 with 18 stores selling outdoor furniture, was an $80 million venture. Barish said the new concept should be equally successful.

Best of all, they'll be hiring back 70 former employees of the company. The new company website is at www.fortunoffbys.com.

The Paramus location is across from their prior location on Rt. 17, in a space previously occupied by Harrows - another long running company that fell on hard times and went bankrupt. It is in the process of trying to resurrect its brand and will be launching another store in a new location somewhere in Paramus.

Fortunoff's also appears to be following a route taken by shoe store Marty's, which also had undergone bankruptcy and liquidation, followed by rebirth in some of its former locations after eliminating its debt and liabilities. We'll see if this iteration is more successful.

End of an Era: Fortunoff Anticipating Liquidation

The venerable New York area company is preparing to shutter its remaining stores and liquidate its assets. The jewelry and home furnishings store simply couldn't deal with the recession and bad business decisions; it was in the market segment that exposed them to the worst of the recession - jewelry and home furnishings.

Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that Fortunoff had closed its flagship Manhattan store on 57th Street and is making plans to liquidate its merchandise. The chain may file for bankruptcy protection soon, said people with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private. Lori Rhodes, a spokeswoman for Fortunoff's owner NRDC Equity Partners LLC, declined to comment.

"What are the two worst sectors in retail right now? Jewelry and home. They're in both," said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a retail consulting firm based in New York City.

Fortunoff has two stores in Paramus and one in Wayne. It has a yard and home store on northbound Route 17 in Paramus and a jewelry and gift store at the Paramus Park mall. The company has a full-size Fortunoff jewelry and home store at the Wayne Towne Center mall in Wayne.

The home store on Route 17, if vacated, would join more than a half-dozen empty furniture sites within a 3-mile radius of the intersection of Routes 4 and 17. Furniture stores often are difficult to re-lease to anything other than another furniture store. They are designed with a maximum of showroom space and a minimum of parking space, because furniture stores aren't considered high-traffic retail. The nationwide housing slump has hit furniture retailers hard and created a greater supply of vacant stores than there is demand.

Chuck Lanyard, president of retail real estate brokerage The Goldstein Group of Paramus, said he still is making deals to put furniture stores in some of the empty spaces, as chains from other parts of the country see an opportunity to move into New Jersey. Ashley Furniture just signed a lease to move into part of a vacant Levitz store on southbound Route 17, Lanyard said.

The Fortunoff store on Route 17 also could be easier to rent, Lanyard said, because it appears to have a higher parking-to-square-foot ratio than other furniture stores.

NRDC has reportedly been trying to find a buyer for the chain, with no luck. NRDC, which also owns the Lord & Taylor department stores, bought Fortunoff a year ago after it sought bankruptcy protection.

Lord and Taylor had been planning to shut the 57th Street store, but plans to sell Fortunoff jewelry in the Lord and Taylor chain will not happen.

Fortunoff's Declares Bankruptcy

I have very strong family connections with the department store founded by Max Fortunoff in 1922 in Brooklyn so when Mrs. Lawhawk informed me that the store was declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy and that it may be bought out by Lord and Taylor, I was truly saddened.

Jewelry and home furnishings retailer Fortunoff has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and has agreed to sell its business to an affiliate of NRDC Equity Partners, which owns the Lord and Taylor department store chain.

The sale is expected to close in early March, subject to bankruptcy court approval and other conditions.

The owner of Lord and Taylor plans to open branded Fortunoff jewelry departments as well as home and bridal registry areas in its 47 stores.

Fortunoff was founded in 1922 and operates about 20 stores in New Jersey and New York.

Fortunoff, which generates about $450 million in annual sales, has been struggling with lackluster sales since 2004.

The company had been doing poorly for several years with lackluster sales. No doubt that competition with Bed Bath and Beyond and Linens n' Things had something to do with it as well. Both stores had a national reach and could boast better prices.

I grew up in Fortunoff's, especially the Westbury location. The store is famous for its bridal and gift registries and its tremendous selection of housewares and jewelry along with its superior customer service.