Saks's CEO Marc Metrick isn't new to economic swings and market volatility—nor are his well-heeled customers. Yet Metrick, who oversees the luxury brand's digital component, a separate corporate entity from the Saks Fifth Avenue stores, says things are humming nicely. In early December, he told vendors that business was up 17% compared to the previous quarter and that visits to Saks's website exploded over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend, jumping 50% to 15 million over the same weekend the previous year.
His theory? The affluent hold more diverse portfolios than they used to, breaking the once near-perfect correlation between the stock market and luxury spending. Metrick also surmises that many people of means are hooked on luxury. And it doesn't hurt that Saks's clientele is more generationally diverse, with Gen Z and millennial consumers more optimistic about the markets than their parents were.
