Club Libby Lu
The mall store where a $25 to $60 makeover turned a six-year-old into a VIP (Very Important Princess), complete with updo, glitter, a potion bar, and a friendship bracelet. Mary Drolet opened the first Club Libby Lu in a suburban Chicago mall in 2000; Saks bought the chain in 2003 and shut all 98 stores in the 2008 crash.
Mary Drolet, a former executive at Claire's and Montgomery Ward, opened the first Club Libby Lu in August 2000 in a suburban Chicago mall with two partners, naming it after her childhood imaginary friend. The concept was a party you could buy at the mall. Girls arrived as VIPs, Very Important Princesses, and were led by Club Counselors through a paid makeover of $25 to $60 that included a hair updo, nail polish, and makeup, then to a "potion bar" to mix lotion, perfume, fairy dust, or lip gloss, and a Pooch Parlor for their stuffed animals. Every VIP was invited into the free club and left with a friendship bracelet.
It grew fast. Saks Incorporated bought the chain in 2003, when it had 11 stores; 50 locations opened in 2004 alone, revenue reached about $46 million in 2005, up 53 percent in a year, and there were 87 stores by 2006 and 98 across 28 states at the end. The growth drew the obvious criticism in a louder key: one trade write-up said the brand had stretched the tween category "down to runway fashion for 4-year-olds."
The end was abrupt. On November 5, 2008, Saks announced it would discontinue "its Chicago-based Club Libby Lu specialty store business," 78 stand-alone stores and 20 clubs inside department stores doing about $60 million a year, so that the company could "focus 100%" on Saks Fifth Avenue. The stores were to close by May 2009. For the girls who had a Libby Lu birthday between 2003 and 2008, the store exists only in party photos.
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