Liz Claiborne Loses $90 Million in Turnaround

Posted Nov 5th 2009 at 7:10PM by Lisa Marsh (Subscribe to Lisa Marsh's posts)

Liz Claiborne designing in 1982. Photo: Bernard Gotfryd, Getty Images

Liz Claiborne Inc. is a company in flux.

The owner of Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, Lucky Brand and Mexx has been shedding and repositioning brands over the past couple of years with the idea of streamlining the company and becoming profitable.

Unfortunately, the hard work of repositioning has yet to pay off. For the financial quarter that ended October 3, Claiborne posted losses of $90.5 million, or 96 cents a share, against a loss of $68.7 million one year ago. Losses for continuing operations were 43 cents a share, much worse than the 20-cent per share loss Wall Street analysts were predicting.

Sales for the same period were also off. They fell 24.2 percent to $769.6 million from $1.01 billion. With two of the firm's brands, Dana Buchman and Axcess, being sold only at Kohl's and Liz Claiborne and Claiborne moving exclusively to JCPenney in Fall 2010, the company must be hoping the mass distribution at lower prices model will pay off in the next year. In the meantime, the company said Mexx is expected to break even sometime in 2011.

WWD is reporting that the company may even be preparing to change its name, though the stock ticker, LIZ, will remain the same.

Tags: Dana Buchman, DanaBuchman, financial trouble, FinancialTrouble, JC Penney, JcPenney, Juicy Couture, JuicyCouture, Kate Spade, KateSpade, Liz Claiborne, Liz Claiborne Inc., LizClaiborne, LizClaiborneInc., Lucky Brand, LuckyBrand, Mexx, retailers

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