California Apparel News

After a 16-year run, prominent Los Angeles boutique chain Madison shuttered its Melrose Avenue location on July 26, the company’s second store closing in two months.

Madison founder Mark Goldstein said his small retail chain is still profitable, but the Melrose location was too close to his flagship store on Third Street near Robertson Boulevard. Now that retail rents are making a comeback, he has rented out the location he owns to a “major tenant.”

However, he declined to name the tenant moving into the space, located across the street from the pioneering Fred Segal boutique compound.

Goldstein has been waiting for retail lease rates to rise so he could rent out the store at 8115 Melrose Ave. In 2008, he planned to lease out the space, but rents dived after the recession. So he took it off the market.

Madison’s store on Melrose Avenue opened in November 1999 under the nameplate of Emma Gold. The store focused on emerging fashion lines that made high-end pieces. Goldstein felt the model didn’t work well, so he converted it into a Madison store.

But later he felt the store was poorly located for his chain. The company’s headquarters is located at its nearby boutique at 8745 W. Third St. “We always felt that the Melrose location was a bit close to what was then our Robertson location, now Third Street at Robertson, and that the two locations cannibalized each other a bit,” he wrote in an email.

In June, Goldstein closed Madison’s location in Westlake Village, which is a well-off community straddling the border between Los Angeles and Ventura counties. He said the Westlake store never performed to his expectations, so he closed it.

For the near future, he said, he has no plans to open more stores. Rather, he hopes to strengthen business at his remaining boutiques, which include the flagship, a location at 1013 Swarthmore Ave. in Los Angeles’ wealthy Pacific Palisades enclave, as well as boutiques at the Malibu Country Mart in Malibu, Calif., and another location at Brentwood Gardens shopping district at 11677 San Vicente Blvd. in Los Angeles.

The retailer’s forte is women’s fashions. Madison has sold fashions from well-known designers and labels such as Alexander Wang, Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent, Marni, Valentino, and Iro. Madison opened a men’s shop at its West Third Street location in August 2013.

Madison has been a leading Los Angeles boutique chain for more than a decade, but Goldstein admitted that competition is becoming fiercer.

“Our vendors are opening boutiques. There is tons of online competition. All the major NY independents have opened in LA, thus a saturation of most products in the marketplace. We are still very solid and profitable, but, yes, it is tougher then the good old days!”