How Perlis, a New Orleans clothing mainstay, stays ‘relevant’ in a world of online fast-fashion

In 1939, Rogers Perlis opened a menswear store at the corner of Magazine and Webster streets in New Orleans, selling suits, sport coats and other apparel items to a well-heeled Uptown clientele. A lot has changed in the decades since.

David G. Perlis, Rogers’ son, expanded the growing brand to the suburbs in the 1980s, branched into womenswear and launched the iconic Mardi Gras rugby and crawfish logo merchandise.

Today, David W. Perlis, grandson of the store’s founder, is running the clothier at a time when the business model of traditional brick-and-mortar stores is being upended by e-commerce and people dress more casually at home and for work — if they bother to go into an office at all.

In this week’s Talking Business, the third-generation Perlis leader discusses how he is trying to keep his legacy business, with its four locations and 44 employees, competitive and why the store recently invested more than $2 million renovating its flagship location.  

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ten years ago, online shopping was going to bury brick-and-mortar stores. You’re still here. Were they wrong?

Yes and no. On one hand, our online sales have been a little disappointing since COVID ended. Online boomed during the pandemic, but for the past 18 months, it’s been flat. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle. The bigger story is that a lot has changed to the way we do business, and if you look around, there are far fewer independent retailers than there were a decade ago.

So, tell me what’s going on.

We’ve seen six or eight national retailers open on Magazine Street in the last five years, and many of them have a bigger, online presence than we do. So, we’re now competing visually and for experience.

Also, a number of brands have come onto the scene as direct-to-consumer brands — online, focus-driven brands. The model used to be that brands like Lacoste or Tommy Bahama were developed in small independent retail stores, then became attractive to department stores and grew from there. Now, new brands are being developed using a direct-to-consumer model purely through online sales. Then, they approach traditional retailers like us, and it’s a real decision whether to partner with folks who are more price promotional and who built their business model without considering the partnership with brick-and-mortar.

What are the implications of that?

They don’t necessarily align with us on margins and profitability and on a partnership basis. The online company can produce a garment and sell it directly to the consumer, but they’re not willing to sell it to us to achieve the same margin we’re used to making.

In the online world, they don’t have to pay for a store, they don’t have to pay commission to a professional sales team, they don’t have to pay property tax on valuable real estate. They’re in a business park someplace in a metal building with a different cost structure, and yet they can sell to the public for the same price we do. So there’s an interesting dynamic at play right now because the really good online businesses make much more money selling directly to you than they do through me.

However, they can’t grow as big as they need to without having a partner that has brick-and-mortar. So, they either open their own store, or they sell to stores like us. There’s a lot of change in our industry right now as people try to figure out how to partner, what’s the best way to grow and build a brand.

You’re a legacy brand that appeals to a well-heeled and traditionally more conservative customer. How do you grow a market selling high-quality, timeless clothes that last a long time?

Our growth opportunities aren’t to simply sell replacement clothing to people when it wears out. You can’t survive that way because what we sell is quality and it doesn’t wear out. But there is still a market for people who enjoy wearing something new and fresh. I call our niche “relevant not runway.”

What about apparel needs in a world where people work at home more often and, when they do go to work, they don’t dress up?

Even though we’re in a casual environment, our tailored clothing business is very good. Our dress clothing business is very good. People are wearing less of it, but they’re willing to buy a nicer jacket or suit because they’re buying less of them.

I think we may be getting a little more of the share of that market, actually, because we’re known for that.

You just spent more than $2 million renovating this Magazine Street store. Tell me why that matters.

We wanted to improve the customer experience, the employee experience, the efficiency and utility of the space. We’ve opened up the space, made it lighter, airier with new street-facing windows and created ways to draw people to the women’s department on the second floor. The customer experience in brick-and-mortar today has to mirror your online presence.

The visual is more important than ever. Customers are often looking for specific things when they come in, so you want to make it easy for them to see and find.

A huge part of the renovation is also to make our facility worth the trip, whether from across the river, or the Gulf Coast or wherever, to make Perlis a worth-the-trip experience and a warm, welcoming environment. I can’t tell you the number of times someone says, ‘We used to have a store like this where I live but don’t anymore.’

We want to be that store for them.

What’s next for Perlis?

Our next renovation will be to our website. It’s been five years, and things have changed so fast we have to update it. Nobody shops on a computer anymore. Everything is mobile, so we have to adapt to that.

As for the future, we reinvested in this building and we’re not moving. New Orleans is a very difficult place to do business, but we’re committed to it and feel like being here is the right thing to do. It’s fun to see people come in who’ve been shopping here for 30 or 40 years and see a newly renovated facility and be excited about it.