Four Mandee stores closing on Long Island

The parent company of clothing retailer Mandee will close several stores at the end of the month as the company continues to evaluate its stores' performance and make the chain more efficient, an official at the firm said Thursday.

Mandee's Babylon, Commack, Smithtown and Carle Place locations will close at the end of the month, said Renee Zuckerman, chief marketing officer for Big M. Inc., the Totowa, N.J.-based company that owns the Mandee and Annie Sez chains. The company shuttered its Hicksville and Massapequa Mandee locations and a Massapequa Annie Sez store earlier this year.

Zuckerman said the closures in both chains are part of the evaluation process retailers regularly conduct. A final list of store closures will not be available for several weeks, she said.

"We're all doing this in the same token that we want to be financially stable in 2012," Zuckerman said. "And doing that is making a smart business decision and doing the diligence every retailer is doing."

Some of the stores that shut down or are scheduled to close are "underperforming" locations, she said. Others were eliminated because they were in close proximity to another store and their leases were expiring, Zuckerman said. The Massapequa Mandee location that closed last month was less than three miles away from a Levittown store, which remains open.

Mandee, which will have 11 Long Island stores after the latest closures, offers trendy fashion apparel for 16- to 35-year-olds. Annie Sez, which has seven Long Island locations, sells discounted designer apparel targeting women 25 years old and up.

Neither chain is leaving the Long Island market, Zuckerman said. "We're very strong in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and have been for 30 years."