This story has been updated. Please see editor’s note below.
Ask any member of the “old Malibu” community and they’ll tell you: times are tough for affordable retail in Malibu. From mom and pop shops to chain stores, retailers are finding it difficult to stay afloat in our up-and-coming beach town.
Adding its name beside Plate, which closed last week, and Bank of Books, which announced a closure on Monday, Banana Republic will be through with Malibu as of February 24.
The Banana Republic, which is located in the Malibu Village shopping center near True Religion and Levi’s, will not be having any final “everything must go” sales.
“Our company’s doing fine; it’s just this location that’s closing,” an employee told The Malibu Times this week, “so there won’t be any big blowout sales or anything.”
Retail stock trends appear to tell a different tale, according to Yahoo Finance and CNN Money data available Tuesday. Banana Republic, which along with lower-end retailer Old Navy, athletic clothing retailer Athleta and eponymous clothing store Gap, fall under the umbrella of Gap, Inc., have reported consistently falling stock values in the past 12 months.
Questions posed to Gap, Inc. corporate headquarters regarding the closure of the Malibu Banana Republic location were not not answered by the time The Malibu Times went to print Tuesday evening, but it is unclear whether the closure has to do with local problems or the widespread decline in clothing retail nationwide.
Gap, Inc. has seen retail stock in the stock market drop 41.02 percent since this time last February, with comparable retailers Nordstrom falling 31.27 percent in the same period and New York & Company stocks rising 0.44 percent. Aeropostale, Inc. stocks fell 89.99 percent in the past 12 months.
Store employees reported nearby Banana Republic stores in Topanga, Thousand Oaks and Santa Monica will remain open, with some Malibu employees moving to those locations.
“The [employees] that can be reassigned will be reassigned, others are choosing to retire and others may be laid off,” the employee said.
Banana Republic first opened at the center at the end of 1999 in the location where Crown Books once operated. In that time, it has outlasted dozens of retail stores that have come and gone from Malibu’s Civic Center. The store is known for high-end but affordable clothes for men and women such as $98 women’s blue jeans, $68 blouses and $70 men’s slacks.
It is unknown what will be moving into Banana Republic’s location at the Malibu Village. Nearby retail center Malibu Colony Plaza has become known around town for its numerous vacancies, but those problems do not seem to plague the Malibu Village, where a new hamburger restaurant just received a Conditional Use Permit.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story erroneously referred to the Malibu Village as the Malibu Country Mart in the final paragraph. The story has been updated to reflect this correction.