British luxury leather brand Mulberry is opening a 1,400-square-foot boutique on Melrose Place in Los Angeles today, the company’s third store launch in the U.S. in the last month. It is the first unit in California.
Mulberry opened two shops in New York — a small unit on Bleecker Street and a flagship on Madison Avenue — before heading west.
The decision to open in Los Angeles was based on positive consumer reaction from Southern California, including strong online sales originating from the region, said Joe Judge, vice president. The company chose Melrose Place, the city’s youngest designer shopping row, because “it’s a really up-and-coming area and it felt very English,” Judge said.
The store, across from Marc Jacobs and near Carolina Herrera, was modeled after the Bond Street flagship in London, but is “a little more casual-yet-elegant, like the Bleecker Street store,” Judge said. “The Madison Avenue store is geared toward a more uptown shopper.”
The boutique is narrow in configuration, with bags and accessories flanking its more spacious sides and perched on wide backlit shelves. Below the shelves, brown lacquered cabinets with leather pulls extend to the store’s warm-hued oak floors. Movable panels lining the front window and small areas of the store’s walls are swathed in tan leather fluting. Oak-accented display tables, which run the length of the store, are topped in chocolate-colored tile.
Mulberry, founded in 1971 by accessories buyer Roger Saul, is sold in nearby Beverly Hills at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. But Judge said, “We don’t feel the store will cannibalize sales. This store gives the [consumer] the opportunity to shop the whole breadth of the line.”
He added that the company, which tested the U.S. market through wholesaling after a major relaunch in 2000, has scaled back wholesale accounts in areas adjacent to some new stores. Still, “We’re looking at the wholesale business to build the brand,” he said.
Prices for ready-to-wear women’s handbags range from $595 to $2,995, with a bespoke collection ranging as high as $10,000 per item.