Gap shuttering Piperlime, and we are sad
Gap, Inc. has announced that they will be closing Piperlime, their online retail company which includes one solo store in New York City. The company sells women’s shoes, designer clothes, and handbags and began as a competitor for online retail giant, Zappos, which is owned by Amazon. Gap will be closing the store and plans to focus all of their attention on their other retail stores as well as online growth.
Piperlime initially rolled out in 2006 as an online shoe store, quickly expanding into clothing and other accessories. They offered free shipping and frequent sales on pricier fashion forward items. The store pushed their own Piperlime collection on the website, and also intermixed many respectable name brand items in their inventory such as Lucky Brand, Marc Jacobs, and Levi’s. Gap believed Piperlime would be an instant online success.
Gap also has popular retail and online stores, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, and Intermix in their portfolio. Piperlime ranked at the bottom of these other stores in revenue, failing to really find their niche market. The store never broke $100 million in annual revenue, holding at less than 1 percent of Gap’s yearly profits. A sad figure for the store who has $16 billion in annual sales. The writing was on the wall.
New CEO shaking things up
Gap’s CEO, Art Peck, was promoted from within the company just last year and is making some much needed and exciting changes in the retail corporation. He explains Piperlime’s exit a little further in a press release, “We are incredibly grateful to our fashion-focused, loyal customers, and proud of our dedicated employees who have been working hard to evolve the brand and test out new ideas.”
The future of Gap is wide open. Peck says, “We plan to keep on pushing new ideas and look forward to seeing how we can apply what we’ve learned to the rest of the company as we continue to bring great products and shopping experiences to our customers.”
Gap plans on Piperlime being completely gone by the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2015. At least fans of the store will be able to shop those sales one last time.
