‘We’re happy to be back’: Century 21’s Larry Mentzer on reopening a legacy NYC off-price retailer

After filing for bankruptcy and shutting down all 13 of its locations, Century 21 reopened its lower Manhattan locations.

“We are, in fact, an iconic legacy piece of New York, and we’re happy to be back,” Larry Mentzer, the retailer’s chief operating officer, said on the Modern Retail Podcast. Mentzer spoke about the strategy with the reopening as well as plans for the future.

The retail landscape has been transformed over the last four years — and Century 21 has had to reckon with those changes. As part of the reopening, the company dramatically cut down its store size as well as the types of products it sells. Now, it focuses predominately on apparel and less on areas that didn’t sell as well, such as home goods and kids shoes.

“We really made a conscious effort to edit the assortment, keep it tight, turn faster, carry less inventory and show the customer really must-have designers and must-have items that you can’t come back tomorrow and get it,” he said.

While foot traffic and sales have gone up and down over the last year, Mentzer says things are looking promising. “I can tell you that Q1, which was February, March and April of 2024, was better. And Q2, which we’re just recently rolling into, is incredibly better. So we’re excited about the summer,” he said.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

The new assortment strategy
“We had 60 years’ worth of sales data, so we knew what worked [and] we also knew what didn’t work. And we really made a conscious effort to edit the assortment, keep it tight, turn faster, carry less inventory and show the customer really must-have designers and must-have items that you can’t come back tomorrow and get it. Really trying to drive turnover and that propensity that the customer has to [say] ‘I’ve got to get this today — there’s no waiting, it’s an amazing price, it’s an amazing item from an amazing designer. I have to convert today.’ And we think we’ve done that. We are nimble, we’re quick, we get deliveries every day. If you come into our store today, I can guarantee you it’ll be dramatically different a week from today.”

The goal behind Century 21’s marketing
“Our goal right now is to drive awareness. It’s difficult to drive traffic on social media, especially without a website, because there’s no digital click-through. So we know that based on likes and shares and comments — as well as a few promos that we’ve pushed out there on social media — that the customer is resonating with our brand. They’re on social media, they’re seeing it, they’re clicking on these things and they’re coming into the store to find it. The problem is that if you’re not in New York, we’re creating awareness but we’re not creating traffic. So our goal right now as a relaunched retailer is to create awareness as broadly as we can, but really cater to the people that are in New York.”

The current sales landscape
“[Sales are] definitely not how they were… We opened up with such a bang and the business quickly normalized. And we kind of rolled through 2023 learning every day what the new New York and what the new customer was really all about. I can tell you that Q1, which was February, March and April of 2024, was better. And Q2, which we’re just recently rolling into, is incredibly better. So we’re excited about the summer. We’re excited about the fall season, which is the back half of 2024. And we’re here to continue learning and growing and just providing amazing deals on amazing merchandise to everyone in New York, as well as any tourist who would like to come visit us.”