Esprit de Apple Corps

Esprit Holdings Ltd. (Kowloon, Hong Kong) will attempt to re-establish its brand in New York with a new store on Fifth Avenue and 16th Street.

The 10,000-square-foot store, to open in early September, will be the beginning of a broad effort by the international apparel brand to re-establish itself in the New York metropolitan area and eventually the rest of the country.

The brand has been available in department stores throughout the U.S. since its heyday in the 1980s, but executives of the company said that operating its own retail stores would allow it to display its entire collection of women’s and men’s wear and accessories, rather than the limited offering aimed at teenage girls in most department stores.

“We need to establish our identity,” said Heinz Krogner, ceo of Esprit Holdings, which has stores in Europe, Asia and Canada. “We can’t do that with 500 or 800 square feet in a department store. With 10,000 square feet in our own store, we can show the full offering in our own way.”

Esprit has ambitious plans for opening stores in the New York area. In addition to the store at 110 Fifth Ave. in the Flatiron District, it has signed leases for four stores in suburban malls. The stores, from 4400 to 5600 square feet, will be in the Palisades Center (West Nyack, N.Y.); Menlo Park Mall (Edison, N.J.); Bridgewater Commons (Bridgewater, N.J.); and Freehold Raceway Mall (Freehold, N.J.)

The company said it is also negotiating to open stores in SoHo and near Columbus Circle in Manhattan and is looking for additional sites in suburban downtowns and other malls. In all, Krogner said, the company plans to open 20 to 25 stores in the New York area. The company has also signed a lease for an outlet store in the Woodbury Common mall near Harriman, N.Y., to sell older slow-moving merchandise.

Although Esprit is eager to re-establish its brand in the United States, it had no interest in opening a glamorous, but money-losing, flagship store in Midtown, according to a report in The New York Times. So while Fifth Avenue store at 16th Street has pricey rents (roughly $150 per square foot), they’re much lower than the multiple hundreds of dollars a square foot in the city’s prime shopping district from 42nd to 57th Street.

New York is the brand’s key new market. “We don’t want to go elsewhere until Esprit is successful in New York,” said Krogner. “We know that it is a highly competitive market, but it is also an international city, where European designs are more likely to be accepted.”

He said the stores would be designed to emphasize that the Esprit label is now aimed at women and men in their 30’s, and not primarily at teenagers. “Research has shown that 60 percent of women are aware of Esprit,” Krogner said, “but they think the clothes are too young.

“We want to come back with a European line like Prada or Gucci that has offerings for 30-year-old young ladies,” Krogner told the Times.