Jon Johnson has owned Moda Man since 2009. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
Market Street didn’t fit Moda Man very well.
The purveyor of high-end menswear will close its doors at the end of the month, owner Jon Johnson told BusinessDen.
Soon after the legacy clothier moved from Larimer Square to 1440 Market St. in 2022, he said sales dropped 55%.
“I had to stop the bleeding,” Johnson said. “I don’t want to close, but I have no choice.”
He said the pandemic completely changed the retail landscape for stores like his, which rely on in-store foot traffic to custom measure suits for clients. When the state effectively shut down in early 2020, when he was still a street over, business dropped by 30%.
Johnson said Moda’s revenue peaked in the high hundreds of thousands since he took over in the late 2000s. Before the pandemic, the business was growing by 10% a year and he was looking to add another location.
But now, as the 72-year-old looks to move into semiretirement, all of Johnson’s blazers, polos, slacks and jackets are between 50% and 60% off.
“After COVID, people just stopped dressing and didn’t return to the office,” he added.
Moda’s brands include European brands Gionfriddo and Mantoni. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
He moved from Larimer Square in part because it became a pedestrian-only corridor, something he said created more window-shopping passersby than people intentionally seeking out his store. Johnson admits that the pandemic had something to do with that but said the store owners he still talks to a block over aren’t faring well.
A year after moving to Market Street, where he is on a month-to-month lease, the city also built out bike and bus lanes in front of his store. Because business was so bad, he switched from buying clothes outright and then selling them to a consignment model. Moda used to carry 15 brands. Today, that number is five.
“The biggest complaint about downtown is there’s no damn parking, and people don’t come downtown anymore. There’s no office traffic either,” he said. “Business has been horrible.”
Moda Man was founded in the early 1980s by Andy Morris, who opened the store in Cherry Creek as Alta Moda — Italian for “high fashion.” Johnson, who knew Morris’ wife through his job as a buyer at Nordstrom, came on as a store manager in 2003.
When Morris wanted out of the business in the late 2000s, Johnson took over as owner. He brought on Joel Appel, the local entrepreneur and owner of Zaidy’s Deli & Bakery, as a business partner. The two met at Moda’s long since closed store in Greenwood Village. Appel had an office nearby and was a client of Johnson’s, and together the two opened on Larimer Square.
But once COVID hit, Appel wanted out, Johnson said, leaving him as the sole owner. Johnson being the only partner in the business also influenced his decision to close.
“We were making ends meet,” Johnson said of business on Market Street. “But this last year, I was starting to lose money out of my own pocket.”
He’ll still keep using the Moda Man moniker for a “mobile” custom fitting suit business. He has a stable of clients from all his years in business and still maintains good relationships with the high-end brands he’s been buying for decades. He’ll also get to enjoy more time with his six grandchildren, he said.
“It’s been some emotional times,” Johnson said of the past two weeks, since he announced Moda would close. “I’ve been around the block awhile. It’s been a good run.”
Johnson isn’t the only men’s fashion outfit to call it quits recently. Cherry Creek’s Mario Di Leone, led by the Italian of the same name, closed its doors in March after 46 years in business.