Saks Global, the company formed almost a year ago when Saks acquired Neiman Marcus Group for $2.7 billion, has had a rocky first year in business. Now, what will happen to Saks Global, and the many brands that rely on its stores as a sales channel, has become a focal point heading into 2026.
This week, the latest shoe dropped in the retailers’ ongoing payments saga. Saks factor (a financial firm that purchases a business’s unpaid invoices for cash) Hilldun Corporation paused approvals on shipments to Saks after the retailer missed two weeks of payments. Brands — many of whom had already shipped their resort collections to Saks before Hilldun paused signing off on orders — are questioning whether they’ll be shipping their Spring/Summer 2026 products in the new year.
Hilldun CEO Gary Wassner, who sent an email to brand clients explaining the pause, cautions against reading too much into it. “I’d really like to set the record straight. We have been supporting Saks all along with our clients. We have approved orders consistently for years,” he tells Vogue Business. “The reason I sent an email out to our clients was simply about why we were not — in the past two weeks — approving orders, which is not unusual. This has happened before. The only reason we stopped approving was because they had missed two payments, and there was nothing shocking about that.”
Analysts, however, believe that the delay is a signal of Saks’s ongoing financial struggles that have been a recurring theme this year. In February, CEO Marc Metrick notified brands that Saks’s payment terms were changing, delaying usual timelines and prompting concern from designers. In June, as insiders expressed their worry about Saks’s financials, Saks Global received $350 million in financing commitments from SLR Credit Solutions.
Throughout the year, Saks has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs (about 150 in February as part of the merger, 550 in April and another 90 in August), and high-profile executives, including merchandising director Yumi Shin and chief commercial officer Emily Essner, departed the company. Reports also emerged in September that Saks was considering selling a stake in Bergdorf Goodman.
“We know that Saks is weighed down by huge debt and that sales have been weak. These things make for uncomfortable bedfellows as they create pressure on the financials,” says Neil Saunders, managing director of Globaldata’s US retail division. The news sends another warning signal for Saks partners and customers, adds Bryce Quillin, co-founder of brand strategy agency It’s A Working Title. Saks Global declined to comment.
One New York designer is currently waiting on a third late payment of the year. Saks Global stores are his biggest orders. “We plan our whole year on that, so it creates a really big cash flow issue — especially when you have things like fashion shows you’re supposed to do, and factories you’re supposed to pay,” he says. “It gets really hard.” An Australian ready-to-wear brand says it is owed $300,000 from stock it has already sent to Saks, and has had further orders of already produced SKUs canceled in recent months. The designer now has to absorb the stock, which is currently sitting in a warehouse. One LA-based designer says she was, thankfully, just paid her outstanding amount, so is now up to date. Things have felt more positive lately, she says.
Vidur Adlakha, founder and creative director of ready-to-wear brand Là Fuori, which has been stocked at Neiman Marcus since November 2024, is also awaiting payment. He says he is owed about $450,000 in product, including $90,000 of unshipped goods that he has held back. “As a new designer who is self-funded and runs his own vertical manufacturing, it’s a lot of money,” Adlakha says.
Though Wassner says a pause in shipments is standard operational procedure, he understands why it generates chatter when it happens to Saks. “It’s been a difficult situation for quite a while, and everybody knows that there has been slow pay in the market,” he says. Wassner adds that, while he’s not privy to internal discussions, the retailer has always been honest with him when it comes to payments.
The spring 26 conundrum
Some designers say they haven’t always been granted the same transparency with payments. In October, designer Jovani sued Saks for $295,000 in late payments, an escalation of what’s been simmering under the surface for some time. Multiple other brands confirmed to Vogue Business that they are still owed large sums by the retailer.
At least one designer has been told by a Hilldun employee via email (which was seen by Vogue Business) that orders aren’t likely to be approved before the end of the year. But Wassner says he is confident that approvals could start up again as early as next week. “I’m hoping that there’ll be room in the credit line to begin approving — and I have told this to clients personally on telephone calls,” he says. “What I hate to do is give people any false hope. If Saks pays, as we’ve discussed with them, which they always have in the past, then yes, the credit line will free up.”
The LA-based designer is refusing to take new orders until Saks gets credit approval on orders still sitting in her warehouse, pending factor approval. (It’s about $60,000 of pre-spring inventory, she says.) “Yet they just placed an order on our ATS [available to sell inventory],” she adds. Adlakha also stopped shipping in September after chasing payments for months. “They came to spring market to write orders, [but] we were holding back on resort orders for November delivery to clear some past balances,” Adlakha says, adding that he still has not received payment for resort. He says that timely payments from retailers like Revolve and Moda Operandi have helped the brand to continue operations.
The New York brand is about to ship its resort order, despite still being owed funds. After that is less certain. “When we have our market in Paris at the end of January, I think we might have to say we can’t show you the collection,” the designer says.
Multiple brands at a recent New York sales showroom said they were continuing to take orders from Saks Global retailers — despite not being paid — because they knew they could claim unpaid invoices on insurance.
That designers are concerned about shipping for 2026 is a “terrible vote of no confidence”, Quillin says. Jessica Ramírez, co-founder of advisory firm The Consumer Collective, understands the hesitation. Whereas brands have historically worked with retailers to boost their profiles — even with thin average margins and the risk at times of delayed payments (though not to the extent of this year) — there’s less incentive now, she says. “Any designer trying to make a profitable business and have good relationships is likely not going to go into a wholesaler that can’t pay and take that hit themselves,” she says.
Many in the industry agree that Saks Global remains a key selling channel for brands. These retailers make up a huge chunk of brands’ sales and wholesale portfolios — if Saks were to fail, many would be left in a serious lurch. “Saks, Neiman’s and Bergdorf, all under Saks Global, is an incredibly important and generally large percentage of many designers’ businesses,” says luxury consultant Robert Burke. “I am hopeful they can persevere, but I’m uncertain how things will unfold,” the LA designer says. “Bergdorf is such an important store, and we’re so lucky that we’re in it,” the New York designer adds. “Our business does well there, so it’s really frustrating.”
“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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