Changing A Sluggish Perspective!

When was the last time you saw a syndicated journalist walking the aisles of Wal-Mart?

Reporters used to be easy to spot.

Remember the outfits they used to wear? They wore those old frat-boy cotton button downs complete with a pen guard in the top pocket. And they carried the note pad on a well-worn clip-board.

There’s a Wal-Mart I often go to near my log cabin in North Georgia.

Can’t say that I have seen any reporters there lately.

Reason I asked is that there is an Associated Press story running in today’s newspapers titled “Aside From Wal-Mart, Retail Sales Sluggish.”

The sub-head reads “Mall-based apparel stores, high-end luxury merchants alike feel pinch as shoppers focus on essentials such as food and gasoline.”

There’s a picture with the article too. It’s a shot of the exterior entrance into an Abercrombie & Fitch store. The caption below it reads “Teen-oriented Abercrombie & Fitch is among retailers feeling the pinch as shoppers react to a slowing economy.”

Have any of you reading this been in an Abercrombie & Fitch store?

Aside from the nearly nude, perfectly built point-of-sale artwork, all the products are designed around that worn and torn, pacific-beach “grunge” look. They also command prices like $79.50 for a pair of worn-out blue jeans and $70 for the worn, button-down shirt.

Most of those teens that shop at Abercrombie & Fitch are driven by a cocktail combination of ADHD and a puberty hormone rush. I doubt that they read the Wall Street Journal or watch CNBC.

Anne D’Innocenzio, the author of the AP article, probably worked her way through journalism school in an Abercrombie & Fitch.

Well…the article goes on to cite continued sales declines at other mall-based specialty stores and teen merchants along with high-end retailers like Saks and Nordstrom…with the blame being placed on high gas and food prices.

Isn’t it wild how the press sees the world out there?

Maybe the press needs to a refresher course in Reality 101.

The fact that Millenniums and GenXers look at Saks and Nordstrom as their parents’ brands might shed some light on why sales are down.

The fact that malls today are “old-fashioned” versus outdoor live/work/play centers and new, environmentally green “town squares” might shed some insight on why mall-based retail stores are becoming history.

And the fact that the folks you find dwelling in many of the suburban malls today speak a language other than English could add some further insight why high-end brand sales at mall stores are down.

The fact that Target’s brandline “Expect More. Pay Less.” and Wal-Mart’s brandline “Save Money. Live Better.” just might be a mirror image of the new consumer lifestyle of choice.

Our BrandVenture intern is a first year student at one of the hot-bed design schools here in Atlanta called Creative Circus. Kevin is also dating a young lady whose father founded one of the top creative shops in the Southeast called BooneOakley.

Kevin is now age 20 and represents the very crest of the Millennium Generation Bell Curve.

I asked Kevin about Abercrombie and Fitch and here is what he said…

“I used to go there back in the day” – remember that Kevin is 20 years old.

Over the course of the last two weeks, the word “Change” has come up a lot. Change is part of Obama’s campaign with a focus on a change in leadership. Change was the central theme of McCain’s speech last night with a focus on market change demanding change in how we view and approach the economy.

When I was an early teen, Sears stopped publishing its annual Holiday catalog (spelled back then “c-a-t-a-l-o-g-u-e") and Woolworth 5 & 10s were shutting down.

I don’t remember much press coverage that it was because of high gas prices and food prices. I think the press talked about cool new stores that were overtaking the market with the rise of the Boomer generation.

Course we didn’t have the perspective of CNN and MSNBC back then.

BrandVenture has had the pleasure of finding this cool gal named Judith Damin who teams up with us and visa versa on branding projects. Judith came out of the ranks of a great agency group called Saatchi & Saatchi.

The two of us have been in dialogue with a real estate developer that is looking to launch a new live/work/play development in a hip, intown area of a southeastern city.

Clients come to us with challenges…so it’s not odd that we may not see things through the same perspective that we first hear from new client prospects.

Judith summed it up best when she said; “real estate developers had it great back in the party time years of the 1990s, they just now need to wake-up and accept the fact that the past is gone and we are here today in 2008.”

I think Judith and Kevin should team up together and speak at the next press association luncheon…don’t you think?

Hey… go put on a pair of those $14 Levi’s from Wal-Mart and a $10 Mossimo T-shirt from Target… and let’s journey!