West Elm Unveils ‘Water Street’ Brand

To offer customers stylish and modern bath and body products, West Elm unveiled a new brand dubbed Water Street. The offering includes towels, hardware, lighting and vanity collections “that help our customers elevate the everyday,” the retailer said in a press release.

“The Water Street collection extends our modern, sustainable designs to every room of the home, making us a compelling and accessible destination for our customers as they build their homes and registries,” West Elm SVP of Merchandising Catherine Schwartz said in the press release.

The retailer said it planned to roll out the collection in more than 100 of its brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada, as well as on its eCommerce website. To mark the brand’s launch, the company plans to hold workshops in each of its locations in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada on Jan. 17.

The news comes as Amazon’s private-label business could see revenues of $25 billion by 2022, per a SunTrust Robinson Humphrey projection that was reported last year. SunTrust Analyst Youssef Squali said at the time that the venture could send shares up more than 21 percent over the following year, and raised his price target to $2,000 a share from $1,900.

“As strong an eCommerce platform as Amazon has become over the last 20 years, we believe that the best is yet to come,” Squali wrote in a note in June, according to reports. “Private label is one of the highly underappreciated trends within Amazon, in our view, which over time should give the company a strong … competitive advantage.”

In terms of clothing and footwear on Amazon, the eCommerce retailer’s own private labels are the fourth most purchased brand, “with only Nike, Under Armour and Hanes ranking higher,” Squali wrote in a note.