THE CRAZIEST BET IN RETAIL

A little startup called Le Tote recently bought Lord & Taylor, one of the country’s oldest brands. What happens next may say a lot about the future of shopping.

- ANDREW LEONARD

THIS YEAR DID NOT START WELL FOR BRICK-AND-MORTAR CHAINS.

In January, Pier 1 Imports announced it was closing up to 450 stores. Later that month, two other prominent retail brands—the high-end audio manufacturer Bose and the paper-goods chain Papyrus— reported their own significant closures. And yet, on the same day that Macy’s announced it was laying off 2,000 workers and closing 125 stores, I was arriving at the San Francisco offices of a startup called Le Tote…where a very different kind of thinking was going on.

Le Tote is not a brick-and-mortar business. It’s a fashion rental company. Users subscribe by the month and can rent and return (or buy) entire wardrobes. But last November, seemingly out of nowhere, this eight-year-old startup purchased the 194-year-old department store chain Lord & Taylor for $100 million. The move raised many serious questions, most of which boiled down to: What?!? In 2018 alone, Lord & Taylor lost more than $100 million. Why in the world would a digital firm want anything to do with a floundering mall cornerstone?

That’s why, when I sit down with Le Tote’s founders, Rakesh Tondon and Brett Northart, there seems to be only one question worth asking: “Are you crazy?”

“You’ve got to be contrarian,” Northart says jokingly. Tondon smiles and says, “That’s where the outsize returns are!”

Tondon and Northart are very much aware of the seeming incongruity. To a certain extent, they are even banking on it. Just in terms of press coverage, the Lord & Taylor purchase generated scads of headlines. That’s useful marketing buzz for a startup seeking to bolster its brand in an extremely competitive marketplace.