Olivier Bron on Making Bloomingdale’s Desirable Again
The Business of Fashion Podcast

Olivier Bron on Making Bloomingdale’s Desirable Again

B1IntermediateOctober 23, 202656 min
  • Interview
  • Business & money

For most of the last 30 years, the American department store has been a story of decline: store closures, bankruptcies, endless discounting and floors packed with racks that looked the same from one store to the next. Bloomingdale’s is starting to tell a different story. Last quarter, its comparable sales grew more than 11 percent, its second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, at a moment when much of the luxury industry is struggling to grow at all. The man behind that turnaround is Olivier Bron, who arrived in New York nearly three years ago to become th...

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0:00

Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOF podcast. It's Friday, October 23rd. For most of the last 30 years, the American department store has been a story of decline. Store closures, bankruptcies, endless discounting, and floors packed with racks that look the same from one store to the next.

0:29

Bloomingdale's is starting to tell a different story. Last quarter, its comparable sales grew more than 11 percent, its second quarter in a row of double-digit growth at a moment when much of the luxury industry is struggling to grow at all.

0:45

The man behind that turnaround is Olivier Braun, who arrived in New York nearly three years ago to become CEO of the venerable department store chain, which had lost its luster. Olivier believes that Bloomingdale's can still matter to shoppers and to brands, but

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