Tiffany has announced that it plans to sue the landlord of its Century City location. It is alleging that Westfield Century City's plans to open an H&M will tarnish its reputation as a luxury retailer.
Tiffany said that under its leasing contract with Westfield, Westfield may not rent to retailers "whose merchandise and/or price points are not considered to be luxury, upscale or better by conventional retail industry standards" near the Tiffany store.
According to the lawsuit, H&M is not considered to be luxury, upscale, or better by conventional retail industry standards: "H&M is not a luxury or upscale retailer. H&M is at best characterized as a 'popular-price' mass merchandise clothing retailer."
Tiffany claims that a store such as H&M will actually hurt the image of luxury that Tiffany has worked so hard to create:
"The location of the H&M store will cause irreparable injury to Tiffany's business reputation as a luxury retailer, a reputation that Tiffany has enjoyed and worked hard to maintain for more than a century and a half."
It seems that H&M's masstige appeal with designers such as Karl Lagerfield and Viktor & Rolf do not impress the likes of Tiffany....
Betsy Johnson better be careful or she may not be welcome to shop at Tiffany!
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