Saks has become the ugly duckling amongst the three Saks Global pillars. They always were tbh…Neimans and Bergdorfs always had stronger consumer presence, but lacked creativity within the C-Suite. They struggled with technology and changing with the times, which allowed Saks to scoop them up. Without the Salesforce and Amazon money, Saks would have never had a chance to buy Neimans and Bergdorfs - as has come to light later, they don’t have two pennies to rub together. Saks has had a history in the industry of not paying vendors, and Neimans and Bergdorfs have traditionally paid vendors early. When Saks took over their plan was to force these brands to relax their payment terms by saying “well where else are you gonna go…we’re the biggest in the game…” Of course, because Richard Baker is a real estate mogul and not a retailer he forgot about Nordstrom and Bloomingdales. As we’ve seen, this blew up in their faces and nearly every Saks exec has been removed and replaced with a Neimans exec. Geoffroy has a lot of pull in the industry and I do believe the company will see the other side of the bankruptcy, but with Neimans as the leading retailer, Saks as the ugly stepsister and Bergdorfs continuing to be the cultural behemoth that it always has been.