As many apparel retailers shutter stores in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mango is growing its brick-and-mortar presence in the world’s most dominant consumer market.
The Spanish fashion retailer is opening three stores in the first quarter of 2021 in three major American shopping centers operated by Simon Property Group, including Long Island’s Roosevelt Field, Menlo Park Mall in Edison, N.J., and Dadeland Mall in Kendall, Fla. The stores will sell Mango’s men’s, women’s and kids’ collections.
In a statement, Simon said the three locations were strategically selected in the U.S. to jumpstart the expansion of Mango’s brand to the American consumer.
“Mango has been focused on enhancing brand recognition in the United States with investments in wholesale and e-commerce distribution,” said Daniel López, director of expansion and franchises at Mango. “The next logical step is acceleration of our physical presence, which will materialize with our Simon openings.”
Based in Barcelona, Mango has an extensive store network of approximately 220 locations in 110 countries totaling 2.63 million square feet, but the retailer’s physical footprint in the U.S. remains limited.
Mango used to have a significant presence in J.C. Penney stores in the U.S., but the company closed its 450 MNG by Mango shop-in-shop outlets upon ending a five-year wholesale deal in 2016. Since the JCP venture, Mango has taken a careful approach to its U.S. expansion. The brand sold for a brief period on the Lord & Taylor website prior to the department store going bankrupt earlier this year.
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Mango has been selling in the U.S. since 2006 through different channels, including freestanding stores, e-commerce and wholesale, and in 2017, the retailer renovated its New York Broadway SoHo store, its only freestanding store in operation.
Last year, Mango launched a direct-to-consumer e-commerce site in the U.S. for the first time, and once again scaled up its wholesale operations by introducing products in select Macy’s flagship stores.
This isn’t the only major market where Mango is expanding its physical presence. The fashion retailer previously partnered with Myntra to open 10 new stores in India for a total of 29 locations. Myntra sub-franchises Mango stores in India and sells the brand’s collection through Mango.com and Myntra’s online marketplace.
For the 2019 fiscal year, Mango saw sales of 2.374 billion euros (nearly $2.7 billion) at growth of 6.3 percent, of which 24 percent came from e-commerce. 2019 was the first year since 2015 that Mango turned a profit, ending the year with a net income of 21 million euros ($23.8 million).
However, given the Covid-19 pandemic, it is highly unlikely that 2020 fiscal numbers at the retailer will approach 2019 levels. Mango has not revealed expectations for total sales, but has indicated that it expects robust online sales this year. Digital revenue for the year through October is already more than 5 percent above the 564 million euros ($669.4 million) in last year’s online sales, the company revealed last month. Mango expects to close the year with sales of 800 million euros ($949.5 million), a year-over-year increase of 40 percent.
The online growth has inspired Mango has set a lofty e-commerce target of reaching 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in online sales in 2021. Mango added nearly 3 million new online customers this year, 900,000 of which were added during the months of lockdown, when digital sales grew by more than 50 percent.
Mango’s growth strategies for its digital channels go hand in hand with the physical expansion, with the retailer noting that it was ramping up its omnichannel capabilities such as offering online promotions in stores’ most heavily trafficked areas, opening buy online, pick up in-store operations and sharing online revenues with franchisees in remote markets in which they are the sole operator in the physical stores network.