No Turn On Red

Linens ‘n Things has announced they are filing for bankruptcy protection. They expect to be able to continue to operate as normal, pay employee salaries, and stock new merchandise. They just have an issue of several hundred million dollars in debt that they need to take care of.

I’d expect store closures, of some level, are imminent and Linens ‘n Things are going to enter the Back to School season with a significant reduction in their number of stores. Where are people going to go for Nautia comforter sets and Yankee Candles? I guess they will have to cross the street to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

Came across this press release from Wet Seal announcing the launch of their online fashion community. Simple concept - users browse website and put together outfits that they can share with friends. Site makes it easy to view, rate, and (most importantly) buy other outfits that people have created.

They have a screencast on their site showing how it all works. (Caution: intended audience is teenage girls, so female narrator says “sweet!” after the competion of a few steps.)

The site seems slow this afternoon, but I was able to check out the functionality earlier and I like how it is put together. This is a pure win for the retailer - increases time on the site, increases awareness of different fashion offerings, and will ultimately drive sales. Would love to see more retailers incorporate this kind of technology.

After an extended absence, this site is being resurrected. Give me a few days, but posts will be starting up soon. There’s a lot of shakeups going on in the retail industry right now and there’s a lot I’d like to comment on. Give me a few days to work out some administrative and development tasks on the back end.

The Channel Checkers are reporting that Kohl’s has started selling Vera Wang merchandise earlier than the advertised street date of September 9:

We have been surprised so far in our survey. 12 of the 25 (48%) stores we have called this week have told us that they already have the Vera Wang line and are selling it. We were told there is a Vera Wang perfume on sale at Kohl’s now too. Many of the stores that have the line appear to be in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast. Stores in Washington and Oregon and South Carolina and Georgia provided the bulk of our positive responses. We called one store in New York City and they claim to be stocking the line already as well.

Read more at their site under: Vera Wang Line Sneaking Into Kohl’s Early.

In the past, Kohl’s generally rolls out their national branch launches in highly coordinated affairs, unveiling the new line in all of the markets on the same day. We saw this in 2005 with the launch of Candies, as an exclusive Kohl’s brand, and we’ve seen it through the past few years of growth in the Chaps brand. These launches, from new fixturing to promotions to actual merchandise are all tied in to hit the stores on the same day, with major national ad campaigns behind them.

There are exceptions to this: Casa Cristina rolled out in the Southwest in Q4 2006 prior to a national launch in early 2007. More contemporary lines, such as Elle and Stamp 10, have seen staggered growth after successful launches. The retailer has also tested new products and concepts on smaller levels before rolling out nationally - case in point is the recent addition of a private-label tuxedo line to the menswear departments of their stores in a slow rollout.

It does surprise me to hear that Kohl’s may have let this merchandise out early. It seems to be against their past behavior. Is Kohl’s really selling Vera Wang merchandise early in an attempt to reach out to some test markets? This is the largest brand launch in the retailer’s history - so perhaps it is time to do things differently than they have in the past.

Good post this morning over at Retail Design Diva talking about how retailers are using Facebook to capture the Back to College crowd:

Students can take a quiz to discover their “decorating style” and (ta-da!) receive a list of products they can buy at Wal-Mart that best reflects their style, and their roommates’, of course. How smart is this?! Students can also search Wal-Mart’s Web site for eco-friendly products or download a shopping list of dorm room pieces. The hip, new items can then be shipped directly to the school (no furniture hauling for dad), making life a lot easier for parents and kids. And let’s be honest, mom and dad are going to be all over that, even if they don’t have a Facebook account. This idea is absolutely brilliant–and I don’t even shop at Wal-Mart.

In a world of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube and a variety of social networking and media sites, retailers could benefit substantially from plugging in. Securing teen and college kids’ dollars is extremely lucrative. Connecting with them on their own platform is invaluable. Apparently, Wal-Mart did its research, because according to the National Retail Federation, the average first-year college student spends $1,112.62 on back-to-school gear. Cha-ching. Who’s in for setting up a MySpace account?

More from Facebook Takes Over the Retail World.

Credit to Wal-Mart to being ahead of the curve of traditional retailers in adopting new technology to reach out to customers. Curious to see how these consumers react to Wal-Mart when Target seems to have a stranglehold on this segment. Could social media technology give Wal-Mart a leg up?

You may have noticed a severe shortage of posts lately. Due to some server issues and business/travel commitments, some posts of mine have not been appearing. I’ll be working on this later today to get the old posts from last week up, but I wanted to say hello and let everyone know that I am still here.

To update last week’s story about the sweatshop allegations levied against a factory that produces Daisy Fuentes clothing for Kohl’s, it appears that things are straight now and they have agreed to update their policies and follow proper labor laws:

A Guatemalan factory that makes some of Daisy Fuentes’ clothing for Kohl’s Corp. has agreed to make changes following allegations it was a sweatshop, a workers’ rights group said Thursday.

The National Labor Committee issued a report on the Fribo factory last month, saying workers told a related group they are humiliated and forced to work unpaid overtime.

[…]

The NLC said the factory owner, a South Korean national, has agreed to weekly inspections by CEADEL, the Center for Studies and Support of Labor Development in Guatemala, which told NLC of workers’ complaints.

More on this from Forbes.

Imagine it is Friday at 5:00PM and someone just posted, on their blog, about a horrible shopping experience they had at your store. Maybe a cashier was rude or maybe a store was disgusting - but whatever their frustration, they just posted their thoughts online and now it’s gotten linked to from two dozen websites and now people are talking about it across the country.

In this day, do you really want to wait until corporate PR gets into the office at 9:00AM on Monday morning before someone even thinks about reacting to this story? Monday is too late when there’s the potential that someone, reading the blog post, has decided not to shop at your store on Sunday.

Think it is far-fetched? I talked about this earlier in the year, when one consumer posted about their bad experience at a Kohl’s.

Think something like this can’t happen to your business? I can tell you that no matter how well you think you are training your employees, something somewhere is going to happen and someone is going to talk about it online. The next big story could be affecting your retail chain.

Today I read, over at Consumerist, about an unpleasant experience a person had returning items at Victoria’s Secret. Look through the comments and you will see a range of responses - some agree with the poster and complain about Victoria’s Secret customer service, while some stick up for Victoria’s Secret, while others debate the quality of merchandise Victoria’s Secret carries.

You know what I would love to see? Someone from Limited Brands posting a comment in that thread. Maybe they say that they are sorry for the experience, that they will look into it, and get in touch with the original poster privately. They could talk about how they are going to look into the policy and figure out if the sales person was poorly trained, rude, or even correct in what they do. A personal face of the corporation, being honest and engaging conversation, could stop an already bad experience from spiraling out of control. A personal face who could prevent the same situation from happening again.

This is the role of an online Community Manager: someone who represents a brand, online, and engages in honest communication with managers. It’s not hard to go through blogs, social networks, and community websites to find out what is being said about your brand. It’s not that hard to engage and welcome conversation and criticism. It’s not that hard to admit that, hey maybe someone made a mistake at the store level but it was due to poor training and we are going to correct that.

People make mistakes and they want to see big businesses admit that they do, as well. But a retailing remaining silent and ignoring the conversation around them is going to hurt their business and drive away customers.

A bit of lingo that I’ve learned lately: turns out that Target refers to the the impact of the Back to School/Back to College season on their stores, by classifying them into levels. The levels are No Affected, Affected, Freaky, and Super Freaky. It doesn’t appear that there are a lot of Super Freaky stores in the company, but those that are classified as such, are situated within close proximity to college campuses. I wonder what kind of percentage increase these stores see, over the rest of the company, during the season.

Was in an Old Navy this weekend, really briefly. Didn’t get much chance to dive into the new merchandise, but it looks like they are starting to transition into Back to School. Saw that the denim has been moved back to the front on the Missy side and is supported with a new graphic package that looks really sharp. Die cut words calling out the “Denim” shop on the Mens side and the different cuts of denim on the Missy side. Looks like they are cut out of foam core or something similar, but did not get a real good look at it. The picture above is an example of what the Mens side looked like.

I’ve gotta give credit to the store I was at (Freehold, NJ) as they were looking real sharp (presentation wise) going into the weekend. Look at the fold on those jeans! Typically, I haven’t been seeing that when I go to the mall on a Friday afternoon - and honestly, it’s not something I’ve seen at Old Navy all that much lately. First thing in the morning, their stores look great but the on-going maintenance, during the day, isn’t always there. But this store nailed it.