Uncategorized | 2:57 pm | April 6, 2011 | By James Lu

Seychelles closes, heads online

Looking for the one-of-a-kind dresses stocked by Seychelles? Well, now you’ll have to go online, after the store closed its brick-and-mortar store at 1020 Chapel St. over the weekend.

“We found that most of our customers were shopping online, so we decided to change our model to take advantage of e-commerce,” said owner Pansy Croft.

The store specializes in dresses for proms, weddings and other special occasions, she explained, so keeping a presence on “Main St.” did not seem like a good business model.

As a result, Seychelles will sell clothing and accessories online and retain a studio space at 129 Church St. for customers to visit by appointment, she said.

“The more and more I speak to people, the more I hear they are all shopping online,” she said, citing Zappos and Neiman Marcus as stores with strong online presences that attract the sort of customers her business targets.

Still, the brick and mortar store’s departure is a loss for New Haven, said Mary Liu ’12, a co-president of the Yale Event Management Organization, which hosted a Feb. 9 “girls-only” event at Seychelles that around 200 people RSVP’ed to.

“They had so many unique pieces,” she said. “They were pretty pricey, but that’s typical of a boutique dress shop.”

Seychelles’ other store in Westport, CT, which opened in 2002, closed early last year.

The new downtown studio will have a launch party in the near future at a yet-to-be-decided downtown venue, Croft said.

Comments