Saks Incorporated History
Earlier company descriptions, brand line-ups, store counts and photographs from the history of Saks Incorporated, kept for historical reference.
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The Company Description of Its Time
The company filed here as Saks Incorporated began life as Proffitt's, Inc., a regional department store operator that went public in June 1987 and spent the following decade assembling a portfolio of American nameplates. Through a series of acquisitions between 1994 and 1998 it added McRae's, Parisian, Younkers, Herberger's and Carson Pirie Scott - regional chains serving the Southeast, Midwest and Mountain states - before the defining transaction of September 1998, when Proffitt's merged with Saks Holdings, Inc., the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and its Saks OFF 5TH outlet format. The combined company took the name Saks Incorporated, and its shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SKS on September 18, 1998.
Building, Then Unbuilding, a Department Store Empire: 2003-2013
The filing keeps the company's expansion and contraction in unusual detail. In May 2003 Saks acquired Club Libby Lu, the specialty retailer founded in August 2000 by Mary Drolet, which turned shopping into an interactive experience for girls aged 4 to 12, and operated it within the Saks Department Store Group. Then the regional empire was dismantled piece by piece: the Proffitt's and McRae's chains were sold to Belk, Inc. effective July 5, 2005; the Northern Department Store Group went to The Bon-Ton Stores effective March 6, 2006; and Parisian was sold to Belk effective October 2, 2006. Those dispositions generated approximately $2.0 billion of proceeds and left Saks as what its name had always promised - a luxury company centered on Saks Fifth Avenue and OFF 5TH.
The end of Saks Incorporated as an independent public company came on November 4, 2013, when Hudson's Bay Company completed its acquisition of the company. The profile's value now is the record it keeps of a distinctly American retail arc: a Knoxville-rooted regional operator that bought its way to Fifth Avenue, traded as SKS for fifteen years, and then sold everything except the luxury business before being absorbed into a larger North American department store group.
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