“I do hope that they resolve this in some manner before spring begins, because our clients — and we have hundreds of them who ship to Saks, and are very much depending upon Saks’s business — are able to ship their spring season and we are able to approve their orders,” Wassner adds.
A 2026 outlook
More needs to happen in the new year to get the business back on the right track, Quillin says. “Saks needs to pay vendors and other creditors on time to help re-establish reliable supply chains,” he says. Fiscally, Saks needs disciplined cost management and improved cost efficiencies, Quillin adds.
To get back on track for 2026, Saks must find a way of making its debt levels sustainable and focus on driving the sales line, Saunders says. Analysts have speculated there’s a possibility of bankruptcy or a restructuring in the coming year.
Quillin, though, doesn’t consider this inevitable. “If liquidity injections and debt restructuring hold and vendor payments resume, this could buy Saks a bit of time to try and improve its offering to consumers,” he says. This is what Saks really needs, Ramírez agrees: to get customers in the door. To achieve this, she’d hope to see a C-suite overhaul to strengthen the retailer’s offering where the current team has not done so.
This, too, poses a challenge. “Even if Saks can return to making its financial obligations on time, how does it balance fiscal discipline with the need to invest in its own product in order to improve customer experience, differentiate themselves in a competitive and struggling market, and in a real sense justify being a destination for consumers?” Quillin asks. “These are steep challenges.”
Though it’s facing an uphill battle, Wassner is strong in his conviction that Saks should be given a fair shot in 2026. “I want to see retail thrive in the US, and I don’t see any reason why people would want Saks to fail. I see more reasons why people would want it to succeed, and the only thing that upsets me in the press is the negative attitude,” he says. “Yes, it’s under pressure. Everybody knows that, but we would like to see that pressure relieved, and every brand that I speak to would like to see a healthy and thriving Saks Fifth Avenue or Saks Global. That’s it. And I think we should all be working to see that happen — without risking anything significant ourselves.”
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