No Turn On Red

Today’s Washington Post has a very detailed, in-depth look into teen shopping habits that, I’m guessing, is going to make the rounds at corporate offices of mall retailers today:

Sixty-one teenagers from across the Washington region descended upon Tysons Corner on a recent Saturday. And we were there to capture it all.

We wanted to learn how today’s teens make their purchasing decisions, how they calculate value and how they figure out what’s cool. These teenage volunteers, all between seventh and 11th grade, brought their own money, friends and sense of style. Some came with their parents; some with their parents’ credit card. But all of them brought strong opinions about what they like — and what they don’t.

More than a dozen Washington Post and washingtonpost.com staff members documented the shopping expedition through stories, photographs, audio and video. We gained insight into teen consumer psychology and the latest trends, but we also learned a lot about the teenagers themselves.

With 10 associated articles, photos, video, and an interactive map detailing how many people visited different stores and how much money was spent, this is a rather fascinating read. Detailed, detailed, detailed. Only click on this link if you have time to kill, because it will suck you in with the amount of information available: Tracking Teen Shopping Habits.

I’m not going to be able to sumarize everything that the Washington Post has in that article, but there are a few points that jumped out at me that I’d like to share:

Collectively, the teens spent the most money at Hollister ($498) with Urban Outfitters a distant second ($319). $288 was spent at American Eagle while $198 was spent at Abercrombie & Fitch. Old Navy ranked up there, with over $160 being spent by these teenagers. Non-existant in this group was PacSun, with 10 visits and no money being spent.

These teenagers are smart. One article centers around their price conciousness (When Mom’s Not Paying, Cost Is a Deal-Breaker) and one article is about their shopping strategies (On a Mission to Buy, With a Plan of Attack). These teenagers came equipped with plans, checking out fashion and getting information from the retailer’s websites prior to stepping foot in the mail.

Where’d denim go? These kids aren’t shopping for jeans, apparently.

Teenagers aren’t just shopping at specialty retailers. This group is also looking at Macy’s, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and Lord and Taylor to find the best deals.

The work put in to this report from the Washington Post is incredible. Like I’ve already said, this is a really fantastic read with a ton of information.

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A quick article from the USA Today, Retailers put ads where the teens are, about the new marketing retailers are putting in place to reach teen shoppers.

From the article:

Driving teen-centric marketing: Teens’ sway over buying decisions is rising. Nearly 68% of parents say that kids will influence at least half of back-to-school spending this year, up from 53% last year, the National Retail Federation says. NRF expects sales this year to top $54 billion, up 13% from $47.8 billion in 2005.

There’s a lot of money to be made with this demographic. JC Penney’s Q3 results will be good to watch to see if their agressive teen marketing campaign has paid off. They have probably been the most agressive teen woo-er, outside of the traditional mall based teen retailers. Has their message resonated with teen shoppers? We will find out.

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According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Proctor and Gamble has opened up a kiosk at the Kenwood Towne Centre to hawk their Olay skin-care brand. According to them, this isn’t about opening a new line of retail opportunities as it is about gaining consumer insight into the brand:

Don’t expect the experiment to change P&G’s U.S. strategy of selling Olay in supermarkets, drugstores and other mass outlets. But P&G says while the counter here isn’t a key part of selling the product as it might be in China, it’s a way to study consumers as they consider an Olay purchase - dubbed “the first moment of truth” within P&G - and then use the insights to market Olay everywhere.

“The objective here isn’t some sort of pioneering retail moment,” Olay brand manager John Brownlee said. “It’s really a way to get people across the whole Olay business at the first moment of truth.”

I like the idea of opening up a smaller retail concept in order to connect with customers on a one-on-one basis. A mall kiosk like this is low-risk but the consumer insight could prove to be high reward. I’d bet that a few more of these kiosks will find their way around the country with short term leases.

Smart move by P&G to try to understand their customer better.

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I have two stores in my area that were formerly Casual Male Big & Tall and are now simply Casual Male XL. I noticed this last week while driving and couldn’t remember if I had seen anything about Casual Male re-branding themselves. As it turns out, it just happened very recently (from News-Record.com, In with “XL” for men’s large-size clothier):

At 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, Bradford Brandon is tall, but he’s not fat. So the longtime customer of Casual Male Big & Tall welcomes the large-size clothing chain’s switch to a new name without heavy baggage.

The new moniker, Casual Male XL, drops the word “big,” which many customers equate as a code word for “fat” in the euphemism-rich world of retail branding.

“I don’t understand ‘big,’ but when they say ‘tall,’ I know what that means because I’m tall,” Brandon, a 41-year-old Boston resident, said Wednesday while searching for 38-inch inseam pants at a downtown Boston store that recently switched to the new name. “I’m big and I’m tall, but I’m not fat.”

The article goes on to say:

“The men’s market has finally picked up on the fact that not every guy wants to be told he’s big and tall,” said Marshal Cohen of the market research firm NPD Group Inc. “A lot of guys want to be told, ‘I’m just a little bit bigger than average.’”

Cohen said the name change could help Casual Male XL expand beyond its traditional customer with a waist size averaging around 48 inches to more modestly sized men with 40- to 42-inch waists who find “end-of-the-rack” size selections at department stores lacking.

David Levin, the company’s president and CEO, said those customers represent a bigger market than those with 48- to 50-inch waists. But the company’s research found many modestly sized men were reluctant to visit stores carrying the old Casual Male Big & Tall name because they didn’t think of themselves as fat, and figured a ‘big & tall’ store would carry only “XXL” sizes.

I’ve seen a drop off in the bigger sizes that some stores are carrying. Some stores that have carried up to a 42 or a 44 waist are now carrying only up to 40 wasit in some styles of Men’s pants. The rebranding makes sense - I understand why they wanted to get away from Big & Tall - but they still need to get the word out there about what sizes they carry, exactly. As a means to grow business, I think this is one step in the right direction.

Is this indiciative of a larger trend in retail? I don’t think so. I think it helps Casual Male expand it’s business and their numbers will grow because of this. But I don’t foresee department stores changing their Big & Tall sections just yet. If they did, would that mean that they would rebrand their Women’s “Plus” size departments, as well?

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Back in May, the talk was about how Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bloomingdale’s had scaled back or eliminated their petite department (see my post: Where’s the Petite Department). This did not go over well, as there is still a large segment of the population who is shopping for petite clothing. A few weeks later, Saks recanted and announced that they would be increasing their petite offerings for the fall (see my poist: Sak’s restores petite department after outcry).

I came across this excellent article in today’s Ventura County Star business section. It is called Size Matters: Petite apparel appears to be in short supply. It is extremely well written and very detailed about the state of the petite department in today’s stores.

Petite clothing sales generated $8.9 billion in 2005, remaining flat owing to the lack of choices from manufacturers and retailers, according to market researcher Mintel International Group Ltd. in Chicago.

But image consultant Ellen York argues there are still 43 million petites in the United States who will not let the specialty size die. Studies show that as many as 43 percent of women in the U.S. could be classified as petite.

The biggest issues I’ve seen facing the petite department in America today is not offering the fashion that women want and not adapting quickly enough to demand. There are a few retailers that I’ve watched that have offered petite clothing but, the be blunt, have half assed it. Owning such a small penetration of the overall company’s business, petites is a department that can get quietly brushed aside by some retailers. That’s led to bad fashion and bad inventory control at at least three major retailers that I’ve watched over the past 18 months.

Retail’s biggest mistake with the petite department: Just because the woman is short, fashion buyers seem to assume she is old, or at least wants to dress old. Across the board, the fashion offerings in Misses Contemporary Sportswear divisions, in most retailers, is not as “old” looking as it once was. A woman who is 50 or 60 today doesn’t want to wear elastic waist pants and dull color choices. The shift is towards fashionable but appropriate clothing. Misses departments have reacted to this - Petite departments have not. Where’s the clothing for the short 25 year old woman who is just starting her career? It appears that most retailers are just reacting to this now (as in the past few seasons) and offering the clothing she needs. I think that explains one reason why sales have been flat.

Department stores have not reacted quickly enough to this change in fashion trends, explaining why it looks like they have lost marketshare, in the petites department, to mall-based specialty retailers like Ann Taylor and Banana Republic. The biggest challenge is going to be the continuing turnaround of this department in most department stores, trying to reclaim that lost marketshare.

Like I said, the article above is really great. Lots of detail and insight into the petite apparel business and where it is going today.

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In case you didn’t get the BTS memo, the trends for this season are as follows:

You may finish shopping now.

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