This article appeared yesterday July30, 2009 in the Wall Street Journal. Private Brand news has a tendency to focus on grocers and packaged goods but this article demonstrates the growth of Private Brand and the impact of the economic crisis on the high-end department stores Saks and Bloomindales.

House-Brand Menswear That Aims to Be a Cut Above
Passersby along New York’s Fifth Avenue will soon see a change at Saks Fifth Avenue: Rather than a designer collection, a corner window will announce the department store’s own new line of menswear.

While the store doesn’t go so far as using the term “house brand,” which sounds too lowbrow, it is emphasizing value with its new venture. The “Men’s Collection” is an unusually comprehensive, soup-to-nuts line of everything from suits to shirts, socks, ties and shoes, manufactured at many of the same factories used by European designers but priced at about half of today’s designer levels. The collection is trickling into New York now, and will be at Saks stores around the country by mid-August.

Bloomingdale’s, too, is rethinking its house brand. This summer and fall, Bloomies is retiring its two house brands—Joseph & Lyman and Metropolitan View—and replacing them with “Bloomingdale’s: The Men’s Store.”

These are the latest examples of how this lemon of an economy is making lemonade for consumers.

Read the entire story: House-Brand Menswear That Aims to Be a Cut Above