Defying Authority

Current Issues / Fashion / News & Comment

Defying Authority

February 9, 2017

Retailers don’t care who Ivanka’s daddy is, they’re not carrying her junk.

The Short Version

Retailers including Nordstrom and T.J. Maxx have dumped Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, saying that the products were cheaply made and not selling well. Ivanka’s daddy, who just happens to be president of the United States, tweeted his anger toward Nordstrom yesterday. Not only did the tweets not have the desired effect, it once again draws attention to the ethics issues raised by the president’s business holdings.

A Little Background

Fashion retail is a challenging market, as we’ve discussed several times before. Several once-popular chains have gone completely under. So, it makes sense that a store would stop selling anything that doesn’t sell well. Back in January, department store Nordstrom, as well as T.J. Maxx and Marshall’s, announced that they were dropping the entire Ivanka Trump line because they didn’t sell well last year. Any sane business person would have done the same thing.

Unfortunately, it is an insane businessman we have elected as president.

What The President Said

Yesterday, almost a month after Nordstrom and other retailers dumped his daughter’s label, the president issued this tweet:

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

Typically, that would be bad news for Nordstrom. Other times the president has tweeted about a company, their stock took a dive. Not this time.

That’s right, the company’s stock value went UP after the president’s tweet. Could it be that the great orange one holds no sway over fashion? That would certainly seem to be the case.

The Washington Post quotes Indiana University retail merchandising professor Mary Embry on the matter:

“Politics certainly do matter in fashion,” she said, “but the strength of the Nordstrom stock validates the strength of the decision making of that retailer that is based on absolutely knowing its customer.”

Also, she said: “The president is not seen as having any particular expertise on fashion.”

The Fallout

The loss of influence may not be the only consequence of the president’s actions. While the tweet was initially issued from the president’s personal account, it was later re-tweeted from the official @POTUS account. That would appear to be a serious ethics violation, using his position as president to influence a business on his daughter’s behalf. That is a very big no-no in both business and political circles.

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Associated Press: “The implicit threat was that he will use whatever authority he has to retaliate against Nordstrom, or anyone who crosses his interest.”

Ethicists all over the country have been weighing in on social media and while some defend the president’s use of his private account to defend his daughter, there is very little question that retweeting the message on the president’s official account is definitely crossing a line.

This adds to a growing list of ethics concern that could eventually end up as part of a Congressional investigation, though the president and Congressional leadership are doing everything they can to prevent that from happening. However, Congress cannot stop the growing number of lawsuits against the president for breaching ethics issues. Already, the president is facing multiple lawsuits over his failure to fully divest his business holdings as other presidents have done. Most damaging may be a lawsuit that claims the president has violated the Emoluments clause of the Constitution. Should the courts ultimately decide against the president, then Congress would be compelled to take action against him.

For all the reasons for opposing the President, ethics is the one over which he has total control. He doesn’t have to tweet at all. He doesn’t have to comment. He chooses what, when, and where he is going to speak. The entire ethics argument could go away overnight were the president to simply keep his hands in his pockets and be more presidential in what he says. Unfortunately, this president seems to be incapable of either of those things.

Over at T.J. Maxx, employees have been instructed to remove all Ivanka Trump merchandise from their shelves and place the branded signs in the trash.

If only it were so easy to remove the president.

Current Issues / News & Comment

H&M Closing Stores

February 4, 2017

Online shopping is where profits are found

The Short Version

Forbes magazine is reporting that fast-fashion retailer H&M is going to start closing under-performing stores and is abandoning its goal of opening 10-15% new stores each year. The chain is moving to put more emphasis on online shopping as it continues to chase a younger demographic that doesn’t shop in stores.

A Bit More Detail

No, your favorite H&M store isn’t going to close tomorrow. Probably. Maybe. Unless it’s one that has been defined as “under-performing.” For now, those are the only stores on the chopping block. The majority of stores in the US and Europe will keep right on putting out the fashion as fast as those factories in Bangladesh and Turkey can churn them out.

For now.

However, H&M’s CEO Karl-Johan Persson has changed his mind about the company’s growth strategy, away from physical stores in Europe and the US and more toward online sales. The reasons are numerous. In posting a six percent increase in sales last year, net income actually dropped almost eleven percent, largely because of increased markdowns necessary to stay competitive. Persson also said that events such as terror attacks and Brexit are creating problems in certain areas of the world.

The move toward a more online strategy isn’t universal, however. Persson says that emerging markets such as India, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey are growing and will see more stores open. In fact, 430 stores will open this year, including new entry into Kazakhstan, Colombia, The Republic of Georgia, and Taiwan.

As H&M grows its online presence, it looks directly at competing with Amazon, Zalandro, and Alibaba, hoping to capitalize off its online/brick-and-mortar combination. The company still expects a 10-15% annual sales increase despite the shift in focus. They are also expanding their online presence, adding Malaysia, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Turkey to the list of cyber markets.

The move by H&M is important in light of the continued struggles that have plagued mall-based retailers over the past several years. Rumors that Hudson’s Bay, who already owns Saks, is making a takeover move on troubled department store Macy’s was greeted with considerable optimism. Traditional fashion retailers are struggling and brick-and-mortar stores are a large cost factor that yields little, if any, profit.

Fast-fashion retailers, such as H&M and Forever21, have been seen as the exception to the decline of retail fashion stores. Where others have failed, fast-fashion outlets have been booming, for the most part. H&M’s change in strategy seems to signal the popping of that bubble.

Again, H&M emphasizes that only under-performing stores are going to close. However, there was no detail defining “under-performing” and whether that might expand should on-line sales beat sales goals. We only know that once a store is targeted for closure, that the door-shuttering will happen quickly. Don’t expect a lot of huge clearance sales.

We also don’t know how this might effect H&M’s partnerships with fashion brands such as Kenzo and its relationships with designers, things that have made the store popular in the past.

What we do know is that this could be a serious blow to real estate and mall developers in the long-term. Any hope for a resurgence based on fast-fashion growth would appear to be crushed. As Amazon and other companies look at faster and cheaper delivery methods, the days of physical in-store shopping look to be shorter than previously anticipated.

At the same time, this move makes the opportunities for smaller boutiques that much stronger. Located in more urban areas in places where storefront rents are not quite so expensive, boutiques counter the online trend with a more intimate shopping experience. As bigger brands drop physical stores to move online, boutique owners are likely to see an increase in traffic, especially from shoppers over 40 who still like to touch and try on clothes before buying.

Either way one looks at the situation, however, the consumer almost certainly comes out the winner.

Current Issues / Fashion / News & Comment / PotD

Retail Resistance

February 2, 2017

Stores desperately try to prevent huge price increases

The Short Version

Your favorite retail store has your back as every major retail trade group opposes the so-called Border Adjusted Tax proposed by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Retailers say the tax would result in price increases of 20% or more and could make many products completely unavailable to American consumers.

Avoiding Sticker Shock

Almost everything you buy, even if it comes with a “Made in America” label, has some parts of pieces imported from outside the United States. This division of manufacturing and labor has become standard operating procedure for almost every American-owned company. That practice is under attack, however, as the Republican members of Congress and the 45th president vow to use taxes as a means of encouraging domestic production.

Retailers, however, say the plan is severely flawed and would not only result in higher prices for consumers but would likely cost several thousand jobs across the country—the exact opposite effect from what Republicans claim the tax will do.

Complicating the whole matter is the fact that Republican leadership in Congress and the 45th president are not on the same page. While the Republican proposal would increase import taxes 10-15%. the president has been pushing an import tax as high as 35%. The president has also criticized the Republican plan as being too complicated.

The National Retail Federation, along with the American International Automobile Dealers Association, and the National Grocers Association have joined forces with smaller trade groups and independent retailers such as the LVMH luxury group to form Americans for Affordable Products. The purpose of the new group is to present a unified front in educating the public of the potentially negative results of the import tax as well as lobbying Congress on behalf of the retailers. They’re not waiting until a final bill is proposed. They want to stop any increased taxes before they ever get started.

Who all is involved? Everyone. Nike. Target. Wal-Mart. Best Buy. LVMH-owned brands Donna Karan, Fendi, Givenchy, and Kenzo. Dollar General. Pretty much every store you ever shop, regardless of whether you shop bargain basements or the luxury mall, is against the import tax being raised.

Why? Because even things as simple as pencils and toilet paper have production pieces that are imported. Any rise in the import tax not only results in higher prices for consumers but in many cases would result in layoffs of American employees. The end result would almost certainly be an economic tailspin resulting in a recession larger than that of 2008.

While almost everyone is in favor of increased domestic production of products, the consensus among those who actually produce and sell those products is that increased import taxes is not the way to achieve that goal.

Fashion

2017 State of Fashion

December 10, 2016

Sorting out the Business of Fashion report

Earlier this week, Business of Fashion and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. jointly released their State of Fashion 2017 report. The purpose of the report is to try and make some sense, connect the dots so-to-speak, of a fashion industry that is too large to report on cohesively on a daily basis. If fashion were its own country it would have the world’s seventh largest GDP, encompassing everything from luxury wear to crew socks.

While the full report, which you can download here, is a whopping 92 pages, what I want to focus on today is a list on page 13 titled: 10 TRENDS THAT WILL DEFINE THE FASHION AGENDA IN 2017. They’ve made the list short enough to fit on one page, but I want to take those trends, expand a bit, and maybe even give some of them a bit of a Hoosier twist. There’s a lot to dig into here, so let’s get busy.

1. INTENSIFYING VOLATILITY

What the report says: Volatility is the new normal. Geopolitical instability, terrorism, Brexit, and stalled trade deals will all increase a pervasive sense of uncertainty in the global economy.

Our take: Volatility may be an understatement. We’ve not even begun to see what the ramifications may be of a new US president and administration that is overly protective of American jobs, anxious to add taxes to companies that move overseas, and quick to add tariffs to imports. On one hand, this could aid US garment manufacturing which has struggled to compete with cheap shops in Bangladesh and other Asian countries. However, American workers are demanding better wages which the new US Labor Secretary isn’t keen on providing. There’s also a chance that we see OSHA’s powers diminished under the new administration, which could make working conditions more dangerous.

Put it all together and I don’t think one is overstating anything to call the atmosphere volcanic.

2. CHINA’S COMEBACK?

What the report says: China’s fundamentals, including growth of the middle and upper classes, remain strong and the government’s new fiscal policies are expected to improve conditions in 2017, but uncertainty remains.

Let’s define some of that uncertainty, shall we? Fashion loves the Chinese market and the rise of a luxury class across that country is what kept many of fashion’s biggest names from going under during the 2009 recession. However, even before recent political events muddied the waters, we were starting to see a pulling back from China’s wealthiest buyers. China’s government is looking to develop their own fashion industry so that they can keep more of that revenue at home. At the same time, as Europe and the United States become more protectionist and wary of international tourists who might also be corporate/industrial/political spies, frequent travelers from China are finding themselves facing increased scrutiny and suspicion.

Combine that with tensions rising in the South China Sea and the president-elect breaking protocol by contacting the president of Taiwan, and the stage is set to see China pull back from the West in a dramatic way should they be offended.

3. URBAN ENGINES

What the report says: City-based strategies trump country-based strategies: a new class of rapidly growing wealthy cities in newly influential markets are becoming central to the evolution of fashion.

The change has come subtly. We no longer talk so much in terms of French, Italian, or British fashion. Instead, we talk about the cities themselves. London, Paris, Milan, New York, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Sidney, Toronto, and even Moscow are all major fashion centers with more being added to the list. While the “big four” still dominate, designers and major labels are already beginning to pay attention to some of the other cities. Chanel has shown in both Istanbul and Buenos Aires. Tommy Hilfiger’s next show will be in Los Angeles.

What this ultimately means is that there are more players in a field growing broader than it ever has before. This could be a great thing for consumers as they have more choices. However, it is difficult to tell whether this kind of growth is sustainable.

4. SHREWDER SHOPPERS

What the report says: Working harder to keep up with smarter shoppers: “always-on” consumers are becoming ever more sophisticated, more technology-driven, and harder to predict.

Everyone loves a bargain and increasingly people are unwilling to spend any money unless they feel like they’re getting a deal. This is affecting the industry in a couple of different ways. One, it is setting up a discount tier in retail that is unsustainable and unrealistic. The entire outlet mall concept is costing labels millions of dollars and threatens to sink some major names if not curbed. At the same time, it is pushing a few retailers to break the law. The Los Angeles district attorney has charged four major stores—JC Penney, Sears, Kohls, and Macy’s—of misleading shoppers. According to the DA, the stores are claiming that clothes are discounted from a price at which they never sold in the first place. So, the bargain one thinks they’re getting isn’t such a bargain after all.

Now, with Amazon getting into the fray with their own brands, expect the discounting to take even more of a toll. American shoppers especially largely refuse to pay full price for anything. This makes belts at fashion houses and retailers quite tight.

5. GENERATION CORRELATION

What the report says: Opportunities to serve the young and the old better: fashion companies should consider how to fine-tune and diversify the way they approach both retired and millennials consumers.

What we’re looking at generationally isn’t really anything new. Younger generations buy because they want to look conteporary in their choice of styles. Older people buy because they have more disposable income and can afford nice things. What’s happening now, though, is a magnification of those trends. Younger people have extended lines of credit at an earlier age. Clothing is a major expenditure for those under the age of 25 but they’re careful about what they spend so they can buy more. Older generations secure in their retirement are looking for luxury purchases at a rate that far outspends their parents. Both have the ability to be dramatic wins for fashion labels.

However, fashion labels are failing to generate the loyalty that keeps them profitable long term. Especially as millennials get older, they are less likely to stay faithful to the brands they shopped when they were in college. Labels have a considerable challenge in more firmly addressing these sections of the market.

6. THE WELLNESS DIVIDEND

What the report says: Feeling good is the new looking good: more fashion players can start profiting from the wellness movement rather than competing with it.

Like it or not, fitness wear is the dominant sector in fashion, across the board, in almost every country. As a result, we see Chanel blending fitness fabrics in with their tweeds and other labels making strategic partnerships with athletic footwear companies. The ability to look good while working out as well as immediately after working out has drive sales of athliesure wear to the top of the charts.

This trend shows absolutely no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Interestingly enough, though, traditional athletic brands are not always reaping the rewards as traditional fashion labels move into the sector. While big names like Nike and Under Armor are seeing strong profits, smaller brands are having difficulty competing as names such as Ballenciaga and Prada hit the shelves in sporting goods stores. Amidst all the growth their looms an inevitable shake out between winners and losers.

7. CHANGING THE RHYTHM

What the report says: Disruptions to the fashion cycle: expectations set by the faster pace of fashion and consumer desire for instant gratification must be addressed to deliver fashion immediacy.

See-no, buy-now is here to stay, despite heavy opposition from both Parisian and Milan labels. The fahion cycle we once knew is gone. Also gone at an increasing rate are separate men’s and women’s shows. Designers are frequently opting to put both in the same show to save both time and money. This past September was the first big experiment with such a disruption and those who participated enjoyed significant rewards. As a result, we can expect more labels to fallow suit.

At the same time, consumers are demanding new fashions coming at them faster and faster. This is where things get dangerous. In order to produce more at less costs, garment manufacturers are turning to sweatshops and child labor in dangerous settings that frequently border on slavery. While both government and retailers having taken steps to prohibit child labor specifically, increasing demand makes it easy to skirt around the laws and the inspector. As long as demand remains high, labor issues will continue to be a problem.

8. ORGANIC GROWTH

What the report says: Investing more to nurture local clientele: 2017 has the potential to be the year of organic growth based on deeper relationships with existing clients rather than geographic, channel, and store network expansion.

Check your wallet. How many consumer loyalty cards do you have? Almost every major retailer has some form of customer retention program that involves sales, discounts, and other incentives to keep you coming back. What you can expect in the next year is for those programs to get more aggressive and more competitive. They know they’re not the only card you’re carrying. What they’re vying for is to be the one in the front of your wallet, the one you rely on the most.

There’s an opportunity here, though, for smaller designers and boutique shops. Local shops already know more about their customers, or, at least, have that opportunity. Mining those relationships so that customers stay local could give small shops and designers an advantage. Consider having special events to introduce frequent customers to new merchandise, or working with other shops near you to create bundled deals. Pampering customers has never held more opportunity than it does now.

9. UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY

What the report says: Digital innovation goes behind the scenes: digitisation is a key to supply-chain efficiency, lower procurement costs, and enhanced sourcing opportunities.

You probably won’t see any of the digital logistics changes taking place within the industry, but you reap the benefits in lower prices. Everything from fabric development to inventory control benefits from increased efficiency in backend systems. Your purchases are immediately factored into how much of the same material is manufactured, when new orders are placed, and even where garments are placed in the store.

Nope, not the most romantic aspect of fashion at all, but this is where money is saved to pay for those dicounts we keep demanding. What is looking on the horizon is the ability to walk into a store, try on a pair of slacks, and walk them right on out the store. Amazon appears to be the current leader in that technology, but as it all comes together we could see even more innovations.

10. OWNERSHIP SHAKE-UP

What the report says: Emotionless reappraisal of brand portfolios: fashion conglomerates can be expected to further intensify their focus on big brands, creating space for other brands and industry outsiders such as private equity and family owners to acquire targets.

This is another part of the fashion industry that doesn’t get a lot of attention except in industry mags such as Business of Fashion and WWD. This is important, though, because it gives emerging designers a chance to be seen. When investors sell a brand, they can then use that capital to help younger brands become established. With fashion institutions churching out more young designers every year, this turnover of capitol is necessary for anyone to succeed.

2017 holds a lot of promise, but it also holds a lot of challenges. The winners will be those who step up to the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities.

So, the question would be: are you up to the challenge?

Fashion / pop culture / PotD

If You Didn’t Shop For A Year

December 2, 2016

charles i. letbetter- no shopping for a year

Sales are up this holiday season, but what if you didn’t shop at all for a year?

So, how is your holiday shopping going? I’m not quite done yet and I know I need to get on the ball and get finished so that I’m not stuck with rush shipping fees. Now that my all-important birthday is out of the way, I can get about the business of attending to the rest of the world.

Shopping for this holiday season is up a bit, with consumers spending over $2 billion black Friday weekend. A fair portion of that is online, as more and more people either don’t have the time or just don’t want to be bothered with going to the store. The amount we are spending, per person, however, is up. Generally speaking, that is a good thing. Our level of holiday spending is typically an indicator of how positive we’re feeling about the coming year. Obviously, some of you are tremendously more positive than I am.

What would happen, though, if none of us bought anything for an entire year? I know, it could never happen. We need stuff. The economy needs us to need stuff. However, I came across an article this week from a woman who just finished a year without shopping. She actually did it. The article got me thinking about the ramifications of such a thing becoming even moderately widespread. We could save money, but would that sink the economy?

What it takes to not shop

The article in question, My year of no spending is over – here’s how I got through it, was published on the Money Blog of The Guardian this past week. The author, Michelle McGagh, details some of the challenges of a decision she made to change her personal shopping habits. She writes:

I was spending without thinking, lured in by advertising and the promise that I could spend my way to happiness. I was stuck in a cycle of consumerism – earning money to buy stuff I didn’t really need, which wasn’t making me happy.

The problem she saw in herself is likely one with which a lot of us can identify, especially this time of year. We shop without thinking. We know we need X number of gifts for whichever holiday(s) you observe, but then we go beyond that, filling our baskets, and our credit cards, with things simply because, “ooh, that’s a really good price.” Do we actually need all the stuff we buy? Absolutely not. The question is, can we actually survive not buying it?

Ms. McGagh’s caveat is that bills and pre-arranged obligations came first. When it was necessary to pay her share on a roofing job between her and her neighbor, she did. Living in London, she also had to buy her food, not grow it. It’s not that she didn’t spend any money at all. She took care of her basic needs. What she didn’t do was shop and shopping is different than buying. We buy what we need. We shop for what we want.

Along the way, Ms. McGagh found that her attitude toward spending changed. She was not as affected by sales ads and commercials. She wasn’t drawn in by artificial discounts. She also made some sacrifices, such as biking instead of taking the bus, not hanging out at bars with friends, and choosing vacation options that many of us might find boring. In the end, though, she was able to pay down her mortgage significantly and save a great deal of money in the process. Her exercise in being frugal sounds successful. Still, that doesn’t mean we should all join her.

Your role in the economy

When we talk about personal finances, the emphasis is almost always on the personal. We look at out spending in relation to how we are affected directly. However, there is another element here that deserves some consideration before we all try to start a new movement of frugality or anything. What we do, whether buying or shopping, has an effect outside of ourselves. While helping our own finances, we can inadvertently do harm to others.

There is this thing called the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is, effectually, how much money the country spends in the course of a year. U.S. GDP was $18.657 trillion in the Third Quarter 2016. We’ve stayed pretty much on that level of spending the entire year. What’s important to our country’s economy is for that number to grow.

You, dear reader, participate in the GDP every time you make a purchase. This is known as the GDP per capita. If the simple GDP was $18.657 trillion and we divide that by the approximated population of the United States, we have a GDP per capita somewhere around $50,424.32. That’s a lot of buying for one person.

Obviously, a lot of us don’t spend $50K. This is an average. Roughly half the population spends more, while the other half spends less. Still, that number represents our level of participation in the nation’s economy. While a single person’s $50K may not seem like much, the aggregation of many people pulling back on their spending would have a considerable impact. You may buy only one “big ticket” (over $1000) item this year, but if a million people, less than one percent, were to skip that big ticket item, our economy would experience a moderate recession. If five million people reduce their personal spending by more than 50%, we’re looking at a full-blown depression. The economy is dependent not merely on you buying, but buying more than you earn. That’s why you see so many commercials pushing credit cards.

Striking the right balance

There is a balance, I think, between being as frugal as Ms. McGagh’s experiment and being an economically responsible citizen. We can grow the GDP without breaking the bank, which has been our typical approach.

First, we need to re-think how we shop and what we buy. Instead of giving in to the temptation of fast fashion and buying clothes multiple times a year, one can focus on spending a little more per piece for quality goods that don’t have to be replaced as often. You’re still spending, but you ultimately save money by not running to H&M every other week because that blouse or pants you bought six months ago is already falling apart.

Second, we need to consider where we shop. Buying local, especially at single-owner shops and boutiques, has a greater impact on the economy than shopping at big box stores. With large retailers, much of what you spend goes to international suppliers and does not have as much impact on the US GDP. However, when you buy locally made goods and services from entrepreneurs who live in your town, the vast majority of the money stays right here. You don’t have to spend as much to boost the GDP.

Third, be a little more self-sufficient, especially when it comes to food. Despite the fact that we raise immense amounts of food on farms across the United States, roughly 20 percent of what you see in the store, especially in terms of fresh fruits and vegetables, is grown elsewhere. That adds up to about 390 pounds per capita that’s not having a full impact on the domestic GDP. Yet, if stores are not providing local produce, what options do you have? For many Americans, a small garden in their yard could have a tremendous impact, saving you both money and, in the strange way that numbers sometimes work, boosting the economy. It might take a little innovation for some, but if even 20 percent of the population started growing 20 percent of the vegetables they consume, the impact would be considerable.

So, could you go a whole year without shopping? I know that might be asking a bit much, but given the uncertainties of the next few years, a bit of frugality is probably not a bad thing at all.

pop culture / PotD

Say Goodbye To Black Friday

November 25, 2016

charles i. letbetter - goodbye black friday

The days of waiting in line all night for a chance at a bargain are over.

I am doing well to move this morning. No longer being accustomed to standing on my feet for hours on end, yesterday’s marathon of ten hours in the kitchen did me in. My ankles were throbbing as I fell into bed early last night. This morning, walking the dog was painful. None of my joints wanted to cooperate. This is all beside the fact that I still feel totally overstuffed from dinner. After yesterday, I don’t see how anyone can even think about getting up too damn early and standing in line for an alleged deal.

Black Friday used to be a tradition for a lot of families, but that tradition seems to be waning rather heavily. I took note as we walked through the neighborhood this morning. Several cars were missing yesterday as many had gone to visit relatives for the holiday. However, everyone was back home this morning. No one was out shopping at 4:00 AM. The only vehicle out was the local newspaper carrier.

While it’s still much too early to get many reliable reports, lower numbers seem to be the case elsewhere. Britain tried adopting the U.S. tradition a few years ago, but reports this morning are that UK shoppers and retailers have largely turned their backs on Black Friday. We’re accustomed to hearing tales of chaos and fighting, but Business Insider sent someone out early to Wal-Mart and they reported everything was quiet, calm, and not the least bit overcrowded. Black Friday as we once knew it is dead. Sure, there’s still shopping, and greed, and one-day sales, but the whole event has changed and isn’t likely to return to the madhouse it once was.

This is a good thing.

The Myth Of Black Friday

Black Friday has never been the big savings bonanza people tend to think. Prices are marked down on a few highly visible loss leaders in an attempt to get people into stores. For decades, that plan has worked. Here’s a rather hilarious video that explains the whole concept:

For years we’ve fallen for this piece of retail fraud. We like the idea of sales. In fact, we’ve conditioned ourselves to not pay what we think is full price for anything. Retailers know this. So, that “full price” is falsified so that the actual “full price” looks like a bargain. We fall for the trick every time.

We also like the holidays and for many Black Friday shopping is a part of their holiday routine. Whole families have been known to go out together, setting up tents in frigid temperatures, and pretending to love every minute of it because, hey, it’s the holidays and it’s families. Retailers know that as well and they’ve pushed store openings earlier to the point that many now open on Thanksgiving day itself. Why? Because they know you just can’t wait to start the holidays.

So, while retailers may be guilty of starting the whole Black Friday ruse, we’re the ones guilty of perpetuating it and making it worse. The ridiculousness only works because we buy into the whole myth. If we actually applied intelligent thought to the matter, the whole event would quickly go away.

But Wait, Something Is Changing

This year Black Friday is noticeably different. Multiple news sources are finding that Black Friday is losing its focus and online sales surged yesterday as more people decided to stay home and shop online. Major big-box retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy as well as online powerhouse Amazon all started their Black Friday sales two weeks in advance for those savvy enough to be paying attention.

In some ways, Black Friday isn’t just a one-day event, but an entire shopping season unto itself. With online sales having grown by over 16%, brick-and-mortar retailers are having to scramble harder and getting much less in return. Last year’s Black Friday numbers were some of the most disappointing ever, leaving a large number of stores still looking at red on their accounting books rather than black. The hope this year has been that by expanding the sales as well as embracing online shopping that disaster might be averted.

Take note, though: US retailers weren’t hurting nearly as bad as they let on. Sales numbers at discount merchants, which is where most of you are shopping in the first place, have been booming. Deep discounters, such as Dollar Store and Dollar Tree are actually expanding, building more stores, and hiring more staff. Who’s left hurting are high-dollar luxury goods stores and high-end department stores such as Macy’s and Nordstrom. Mall stores such as Abercrombie & Fitch and American Apparel are at risk of having to close more stores if this holiday season does not improve dramatically, and there’s no indication it will.

Sure, we still love a good sale, but fewer of us are willing to get out of bed at some ungodly hour on a cold morning in November to actually take advantage of those sales. We’d rather sit home, surf on our phones, and buy that cute sweater online. Black Friday as a day of chaos and high sales appears to be all but dead.

Controlling Our Greed

I’ve complained about Black Friday before. In fact, these photos were first part of a Black Friday rant four years ago. Unfortunately, we lost that particular article when the server crashed a couple of years ago. Still, my point is that this exercise in sheer greed is not new. Just because the shape of Black Friday is expanding beyond a single 24-hour period doesn’t mean that we’re buying any less. We’re not. If anything, our constant consumption has taken our shopping to new heights. While the bash-em-in-the-head version of Black Friday might be over, what we’ve done is expand the scope and methodology of our greed. We’re buying more.

Sure, where we’re shopping has changed. We’re buying more from local stores, which improves our local economy. We’re buying more online, which helps the environment a little bit, allegedly. We’re still buying, though, and not necessarily so we can give to others. While the numbers vary wildly from one report to another, a fair portion of us useBlack Friday sales to buy things for ourselves. That new big screen TV? Yeah, that’s going in our own living room. We can call if a family gift if you want, but we still know the actual reasoning was pure selfishness. We deserve it, right? That sweater? Hey, it’s getting colder out and that one you bought last year is looking a bit ratty. And you can never have too many pants.

We don’t need to have a Black Friday to be greedy. We just are. We always have been. Each year, we say we’re going to give more to charity. Each year, there are more opportunities to real good. Each year, we just let those opportunities slip right on by. Why? Because those boots are40% off the price previously marked up 50$. We’re not buying them for the kids, or for Aunt Ella. Those are going in our own closets. We’re greedy.

Herein lies the perpetual hypocrisy of Thanksgiving, a reflection of much of the hypocrisy other countries see in all of America. We claim to be so concerned about others. We claim to want what is best for the world. But in the end, it’s our own fat asses we take care of. We give thanks for what we have and then demand more.

I made sausage balls yesterday and set them out for everyone to snack on throughout the day. My hope was that they would be enough to keep the little ones out of my hair. It didn’t work. They looked at the overflowing container and asked, “It this all we’re getting?”

We learn greed young. We need to get over our fat selves. Let’s kill Black Friday for good. Stay home. Don’t shop for what you don’t legitimately need. Stop the greed.

Advertising / Fashion / Social Commentary

Personalized Shopping Could Get A Bit Creepy

October 24, 2016

charles i. letbetter - personalized shopping

I’m a champion for personal differences. All society should be much more personalized. —George M. Church

charles i. letbetter - personalized shopping could get a bit creepy

Having your total shopping experienced personalized to you sounds like a good thing until you read the small print

Please allow me to paint a scenario for you.

Imagine that you woke up this morning with a bit of a sniffle. As the seasons change, your allergies are acting up a bit; nothing serious but you should probably pick up some over-the-counter medication on your way to work. You down a cup of coffee and toast a bagel before heading out the door. Stopping at the convenient drug store just down the street, you pick up the allergy medication and your favorite candy bar. Work is stressful, as Mondays so often are, and you welcome the chance to get out of the office at lunch time. You decide to do a little shopping to cheer yourself up.

Walking into a department store just two doors down from your office, the first thing you see are some cute sweaters that would be perfect for wearing to work. You look for the price and a small LED screen tells you the sweater is 50% off the regular price. You can’t beat a deal like that. As you pick up a sweater in your size, your favorite song comes on the store’s music system. Paying for the sweater with the store’s credit card generates another 10% off the price and you’re beginning to feel as though this was a great bargain. The clerk hands you the receipt and on the back is a coupon for a bag full of your favorite candy bar.

You have just enough time to grab something to eat and when you enter the sidewalk cafe the waiter immediately suggests the vegetable soup, emphasizing its healthy properties. Finished with the soup, you return to work and get a call from your trainer at the gym. He suggests you stop by on your way home because, you know, Mondays are so very stressful.

A Highly Personalized Life

According to Joseph Turow, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, that highly personalized life experience is possibly less than a year away. His upcoming book, The Aisles Have Eyes comes out in January and covers the details of how and why all this personalization is happening. In an interview with Kaveh Waddell for The Atlantic magazine, Turow explains not only the upside of personalization but also the creepy dangers of living in such a connected world. Walking into a store and immediately finding what you want at a price you can afford sounds wonderful, but the details behind how that happens can be a bit disconcerting.

Of course, most of us already know that everything we do online is being tracked dozens of different ways. Every website you visit, every click you make, every product over which you briefly drool is noticed by something, somewhere, and that information is stored in a database for later influence. As a result, when another website feels the time is right, an ad pops up for that exact same product, touting a new, lower price. We get it. We know we’re being watched and our data is being collected.

What we’ve not realized, perhaps, is that it is not just our online activity that is being tracked. Everything we do is being noted by some app connected to some database. Our cell phones are most often the culprit. One app recognizes a sneeze and knows you may need coupons for a cold medicine. Another notices that you are driving more aggressively to work, indicating that you’re likely stressed even before you get there. Four different apps notice the purchase you make at the drug store and send an alert to the waiter at the cafe you just entered, suggesting that you might like the soup. It’s all possible, right now.

Nothing You Do Is Secret

Author George Orwell warned us about the constant oversight of a government he referred to as “Big Brother.” What Orwell didn’t imagine is that we would have apps and “reward” cards that collect far more information about us and our habits than his “Big Brother” could ever dream. Even more astonishing to Orwell is that we would hand over such information willingly. No one requires us to download the apps or accept the “reward” cards. We do so in the hopes of perhaps getting a bit of a discount on the things we buy.

Is a 10% discount worth giving up a lot of privacy? Apparently, we tend to think so. Rarely does anyone opt out of information gathering, especially once they’ve started using a program. For example, I just received my AARP card last week because I’m even older than Luke Perry. The card comes with a long list of “benefits” that include discounts for a lot of the things old people like me are apparently supposed to do, such as eat out and take trips. I read the small print, though. Anytime I use the card for a discount, AARP collects that information. They note not only which restaurant I dine at, but how much I spend. If I eat at a chain facility in multiple cities, that gets noticed as well. Over time, they are able to build a profile of my activities, which in turn, allows them to better “personalize” my “benefits.”

Do I mind AARP having that information? Not especially, because the presumption is that they use the information to my benefit. However, they also sell that information to “partners.” I would like to presume that those “partners” are equally safe, but how would we know? What are my options if one of those “partners” uses that information to start sending me spam? What if my health insurance rates go up because they see that what I’m eating probably isn’t helping my blood pressure a damn bit? Yeah, we might have a problem here.

The Potential For Abuse

While we all like the convenience of having everything personalized for us, the reality is that the information we give up could be used against us as well. From the article comes this question and answer:

Waddell: Is it legal for an advertiser or a retailer to decide, based on someone’s profile, like their race, that they’re higher risk and perhaps not show them certain goods?

Turow: Sure! Of course. They’ll never say that it’s because of race—and they wouldn’t do it just because of race. They’d do it because of, say, income. If you have the money, it doesn’t matter what race you are, from their standpoint—but race gets built in by virtue of where people live, their income brackets, and other things that are much less obvious.

I think age is going to be a major factor. It already is, among retailers. Income is going to be a big factor. And things that we don’t even think about, various concatenations of lifestyles that lead to certain predictions about what you will or will not read, or when you will or will not take a vacation, or if you will or will not have certain frequent-flier miles.

The ability to run through thousands of datapoints about you and compare them with thousands of datapoints about people you don’t even know, and then come up with a sense of what you will buy or not buy at what price: That’s the goal. The goal is to come up with a price for you that you accept based on the product they think you would want.

Personalization is great when it works in your favor, but we have to remember that all businesses need to make a profit. Therefore, they’re inherently going to look for ways to turn everything in their favor more than ours. If that means denying some people access to certain goods and services, then that is exactly what they’re going to do.

The Internet Of Things

Kat and I were watching last night’s episode of Madame Secretary before she left for school this morning. As part of the storyline where the family is being stalked, all of their “smart” appliances are hacked. The family becomes frightened when they realize that not even the presence of a physical security detail can protect them from someone taking control of the lights, the heat, and the appliances in their home.

When you hear people talking about “The Internet of Things,” they’re talking about how everything in our lives is becoming interconnected. Our appliances, the lights in our house, the heat, our phones, our insurance, and our shopping. Everything we do becomes a datapoint somewhere that connects to something else that connects to somewhere else. So, if your income is low and you show a history of having difficulty paying your bills, maybe an app starts shutting off the lights rather than leaving them on for hours on end, or adjusts the thermostat so you use less energy. Maybe your local grocery won’t sell you that big box of fried pies because they know you’re borderline diabetic. Perhaps the price on that pair of boots you like suddenly shoots up and is now more than you have the ability to cover.

Even worse, as events last week demonstrated, what happens when all our data gets hacked? There is no such thing as a totally safe database. That means the more information we allow people to collect, the more at risk we are of that information being stolen and used against us.

No, that’s not creepy at all, is it? Get ready, though. I don’t see any way to stop this phenomenon from happening, short of everyone on the planet unplugging and going back to binary means of commerce. Something tells me none of us are willing to do that. So, bend over and lube up. We’re not only getting screwed, we’re asking for it. Don’t worry, though; it’s all personalized.

Fashion / PotD

Recycling Fashion’s Trash With New Fashion

September 6, 2016

charles i. letbetter - recycling fashion

We live in a disposable society. It’s easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name – we call it recycling. —Neil LaBute

charles i. letbetter - recycling fashion's trash to create new fashion

Recycling old clothes to create new fashion addresses a big problem, but is it enough?

Sitting near my back door are two trash bags full of clothing waiting to be donated to … something. We’ve thought about different charities, but looking into them we were disappointed by the number of clothes still ending up in landfills. There are a few stores around that will give you store credit (minimal as it may be) for donating your used clothing to them, but they still end up throwing much of those donations into the incinerator. Actual recycling of clothes doesn’t happen as much as we’d like to think.

As we prepare for the onslaught of new clothing that arrives with the beginning of a month of fashion weeks, we need to stop and take a moment to consider what we’re doing with the things we cast off. As (hopefully) wonderful new designs come down the runway, we’re likely to see a lot that we want hanging in our closets. The problem is that our closets are already full. Our dresser drawers are already overflowing. Before we buy new, we have to make space by tossing out the old.

Some people religiously donate to charitable resale shops. Others try to make a dime back at consignment shops. Too many others don’t want to be bothered and simply throw things in the trash. In doing so, as much as we might think we’re doing something good, we are creating a problem.

Fast Fashion Is A Dirty Business

We’ve talked about it before, how much fast fashion generates more clothing than can be worn. By some accounts, fast fashion is the second dirtiest business in the world. Only the oil industry produces more pollution. For the better part of the past decade, environmentalists have warned about the tremendous impact of fashion’s overwhelming waste. Between the harsh chemicals used in fabric production and the amount of material deposited in landfills, the negative impact of fashion is greater than its economic benefit.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the immoral use of animal hide and fur.

Both the producer and the consumer are at fault. Garment manufacturers are under pressure to produce materials at increasingly lower costs in order to feed fast fashion’s discount-oriented machine. Recycling these materials is difficult because the chemicals used in their creation destroys fibers making it difficult for stitching to hold up over any length of time. Fabrics begin to fray, become discolored, and start to fall apart after only a few washings.

Consumers don’t treat clothes any better. We use fabric softeners and harsh laundry detergents that not only pollute the water but further erode the quality of the fabrics. Simply by trying to maintain our clothes we are destroying them. Then, not liking the damaged condition of our wardrobe, we throw them away, by the ton. We don’t even consider recycling in many cases because the condition of the clothing is just too poor.

A Possible Solution

Answers to big problems sometimes come from unlikely sources. In this case, one of fast fashion’s leading retailers, H&M, is at least trying to find sustainable solutions. An article in WWD yesterday takes a look at the retailer’s efforts at recycling used clothing by turning them into new fashion. H&M partnered with the London College of Fashion in creating a contest urging design students to use donated materials as the central element in a capsule collection.

Fabrics for the project came from H&M’s policy of allowing customers to bring in castoff clothing, regardless of origin. The program, which began in 2012, promises consumers a discount on a single item in the store in exchange for their donation. Shoppers are told that their donations will be recycled or used for new garments. The contest is an important step toward fulfilling that promise.

33 teams participated in the project aiming to waste no material in the production of new fashion. Eight winners were announced, though there is no mention as to whether any of the collections might be considered for production. The message sent to design students, however, was pretty clear: recycling materials gets you hard-to-find attention.

Will It Really Work

Cecilia Brännsten, H&M’s sustainability business expert, told WWD:

We will need a holistic approach to circularity. It will include the whole life cycle from design, what chemicals we put into our products, material choice, production processes and new ways of enjoying fashion by reuse, rental, and repair.

Such an attitude is necessary if fast fashion is going to survive. Without it, there is a place in the near future where the mountains of cast-off and unsold clothing become a burden that cannot be ignored. The current model of fast fashion is simply not sustainable.

However, recycling solutions require consumer participation at a much higher degree than what is currently taking place. While we are pleased to see design students thinking of recycling, making the leap from contests to actual production requires that those mountains of clothes be available to garment manufacturers rather than in landfills. If consumers don’t participate in recycling programs, there is no source for the new designs.

Doing Your Part

I’m going to stop short of actually endorsing H&M’s clothing donation program. I think it is going to take more than a one-time 15% discount for them to procure enough usable fabric to actually turn recycling into a viable fabric source.

At the same time, though, those who shop fast fashion retailers like H&M need to share in the burden of finding a sustainable solution to all the waste they’re creating. Perhaps if there were a requirement for shoppers to donate at least one item before buying a new one then recycling programs might stand a chance. I don’t see that happening, though, as it would cut into the impulse shopping that accounts for the majority of fashion purchases in the first place. Consumers, people like you and me, have to be motivated to do more.

Unfortunately, if a problem isn’t causing us adverse pain we tend to not care about being part of the solution. We want other people to do the work for us. Too many people think that their participation doesn’t matter. If we’re going to put a dent in the amount of fashion waste created then we all have to participate in recycling programs, whether at H&M or elsewhere. Stop putting fabric in the trash. Either find a way to reuse materials yourself or make it available to someone who can.

I sincerely believe H&M and other fashion retailers want to be responsible. Doing so is good for their bottom line. Nothing changes without your participation, however. You need to be fashion responsible. Before you swipe your credit card for that new Dior blazer, consider donating something from your closet to a recycling project. We’ll all be better for it.

Fashion / Mythology / pop culture

Damn Kids Ruin Everything. Officially.

September 2, 2016

charles i. letbetter - damn kids are ruining everything. officially

I’ve got seven kids. The three words you hear most around my house are ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, and ‘I’m pregnant’. —Dean Martin

charles i. letbetter - damn kids ruin everything. officially

Millennials are accused of killing a lot of things. Some of them needed to be killed.

If I hadn’t pulled the article for reference yesterday, when I was still almost in a good mood, relatively speaking, I’d blame this whole article on the kids. You know, the seven-year-old who decided to play with lighting birthday candles at 2:00 in the morning. And his sister who refused to go to sleep after all the commotion. Damn kids. If I’m more surly and cantankerous than normal it’s all their fault.

However, those particular kids aren’t the ones we’re discussing this morning. Once again, we’re talking about Millennials. You know, the ones born somewhere between 1980 and 2000. These are the same kids that will comprise half the workforce by the year 2020. They are formidable, at least as far as logistics are concerned. They are also very different from Gen-X (those born in the 70s) and the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1963). These dear children have ideologies and concepts sometimes directly in opposition to their parents and grandparents.

As with every generation before us, those of us who are older blame the destruction of the world as we know it on the younger generation. Our grandparents leveled that claim against us, with our rock-and-roll music and that long-haired hippy stuff. I’m sure their grandparents did it to them as well. This is a time-honored tradition that is a necessity if we are to continue progressing. However, millennials stand accused of killing a multitude of things. We’ve seen at least a partial list and it’s quite long. Millennials are murderers.

Those Meddling Kids

I know, I know. I’m sounding more and more like the old man chasing kids off his lawn. In a way, that’s what we’re all doing. When some things change, the things with which we are most comfortable, we’re going to resist; it’s our nature. Some of what has changed because of Millennials pisses us off. Damn kids. We have a right to be upset. Consider this list of things they’ve killed:

Manners. Someone has said that Millennials have no class. This is a broad, sweeping generalization, the kind you’re not supposed to make. There are exceptions. As a group, however, they are totally void of any social considerations. They talk too loud. They are oblivious to anyone else. And have you seen these kids eat?
Retail. No, seriously, it’s all the kids’ fault that Aeropostale was sold at auction yesterday. They don’t shop in stores, they shop online. They don’t pay full price. Bargain basements and second-hand shops source their wardrobes. They just don’t spend money, and for a group their size, that’s a very bad thing.
Vacations. I can’t really say too much on this one. I’ve not had a real vacation since 2009. However, the problem is that not only are Millennials not taking vacations (they can’t afford it), they’re shaming those who do. That, dear children, is enough to make us collectively hate you. We’ve worked hard for our vacation time. Fuck you.
Crowdfunding. Crowdfunding was a really great idea when it applied to unique ideas that were outside the mainstream. Damn brats killed that, though, by asking people to help pay for their weddings, or their honeymoons, or their boob jobs, or their flat tire. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Some Things Need To Die

Not everything that has died at the hands of Millennials is a tragedy. There are some of the things on that list that should have died long ago. Scream and yell at the kids all you want, we’re rather happy that some of these things have died, or at least fallen out of favor.

McWraps and (maybe) McDonalds. McWraps definitely needed to go. That piece of pretentious self-indulgence was long over-due. Putting the whole fast-food chain into a nose-dive was a surprise no one saw coming, though. Millennials don’t like chemically-produced food products. Not a bad move.
9-5 Work Days. There remains some debate over whether the kids actually killed this one or just pulled the sheet over its head. Freelancing, job-sharing, and other creative forms of doing anything but working 9-5 is almost the norm now. Mind you, they still manage to work more hours. This is a good thing.
Email marketing. This isn’t quite complete, but it can’t come fast enough. While Millennials check their email more frequently than anyone, they don’t click marketing links. Hell, half the time they don’t even open the email. Email marketing was always a numbers game but those numbers are almost impossible to reach.
The religious right. Remember that whole Moral Majority thing of the 1980s? Dead. Gone. Fewer of these sinners attend church at all and those who do are far more likely to be part of a more progressive, dare I say liberal congregation. They have a different morality. They support a woman’s right to choose. LGBT lifestyles are their normal. Sorry, Newt, you can go decompose now.

Not Letting Them Off The Hook

Just because the damn kids got a few things right doesn’t mean we can let them off the hook for ruining the things we enjoyed. I’m still on the fence about them destroying network television as we once knew it. I just don’t get into the whole binge-watching craze. I rather agree with them on their concepts of dating and marriage, too. Their obsession over gluten-free and organic is a pain in my ass, though. I don’t like paying more for vegetables just because someone carefully measured the amount of shit that was dumped on them. And I like bread, dammit! And cookies! You just keep your tiny little hands off my gluten!

We also have to take them to task for this whole anti-vax thing. C’mon, kids, just because you didn’t like the ouchy shots doesn’t mean they weren’t good for you. And while we’re at it, the rest of the world would appreciate it if you’d actually discipline your own brats, now that you’re finally having them. We’re sick and tired of them talking back to teachers and other adults and swearing like little sailors. No, it’s not fucking cute. We’re not laughing.

Being the largest demographic group in the world carries a lot of responsibility. We Boomers should know, we had a similar effect when we came along and it cause problems for a lot of older people. There were too many times we didn’t think before we acted. Disco is a good example.

So kids, watch yourselves. We don’t care if there are more of you than there are of us. Have some consideration for the generation that made the choice to let you live. Trust us, there were plenty of times when we considered the alternative. Some days, we still do.

And stay the fuck off my lawn.

Fashion / PotD

Luxury Shoppers Aren’t Nice People

August 30, 2016

I am convinced that there can be luxury in simplicity. —Jil Sander

charles i. letbetter - luxury shoppers are not nice people

If you need help, don’t bother asking the person coming out of a luxury retailer

Let’s play a game this morning. You’re walking down the street with a friend, maybe doing a bit of window shopping. It’s a nice day and you’re enjoying looking at the window displays of luxury brands even though you don’t have the money to actually shop there. A young woman on crutches approaches from the opposite direction and just before she gets to you she stumbles and drops the bags she’s carrying, spilling their contents on the sidewalk. What do you do next?

Sitting at home, looking at this on your phone or tablet, it’s easy to say we would rush over and help the young woman. After all, it’s just the polite thing to do. One would have to be callous to just stand there or keep walking. Who would do such a thing?

But when Paris Descartes University and University of Southern Brittany teamed up to actually test shoppers reactions, the results were not favorable. As it turns out, just the presence of luxury brands is enough to change how people react to someone in need. Whether those people actually shop in the luxury stores doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference. Being around retail shops for names like Prada, Chanel, and Dior causes us to be less kind, less helpful, and less charitable. Only 35% of luxury shoppers offered any kind of aid or assistance to the person in need. By contrast, when the same test was performed in an area void of luxury retailers, 77.5% of shoppers responded in a positive manner and helped.

I Gave At The Office

There are many reasons for why luxury shoppers might be shy about helping. I don’t have time to go into all of them, but one of the primary reasons is that people who have money typically manage their money, or have someone do it for them. When it comes to charity, donations are made at scheduled periods to accommodate both cash flow and tax issues. These people often give millions of dollars annually. As a result, they tend to be of the opinion that they’ve already given back to society, substantially. They don’t need to do any more.

Paired with this is the sad reality is that those who have large amounts of money are constantly being asked to donate more. They’re aware of myriad scams and con games that would quickly drain their bank accounts if given the opportunity. Those who have been stung by such fraud are justifiably cautious. Even a simple act of stooping down to help someone with their packages puts them at risk of theft or kidnapping. They are cautious for a reason.

Does this justify them not helping someone in need? In some cases, perhaps so. How does one observe such an event, especially on a busy Parisian street, and know whether or not the need is real or an act? If someone is out without a security detail, they may already feel significantly at risk. Such events are exactly the type of thing security experts warn their clients to avoid. So maybe we give some of them a little slack.

Faking The Luxury Thing

One of the most interesting aspects of the study is that the mere presence of a luxury shop is all it took to change people’s reactions. When the super-rich reacts negatively, we’re really not all that surprised. When average non-rich people react this way, though, we’re a little more surprised. Why would their behavior change based on what they’re near?

Blame the credit card. While the number of millionaires is legitimately increasing, so are the number of people who want to act and shop as though they’re richer than they are. Their lives are fueled by an array of credit cards with floating balances. Their debt is high. These people are playing a game of public deception. They want everyone to see them as something they’re not. One most often sees them window shopping at the big-name stores, but then making their actual purchases at the outlets.

Should we expect any different behavior from these people, really? If they’re already living fictional lives based on incredible debt, then we shouldn’t be too terribly surprised when they follow through by acting more snobby in the presence of someone in need. The difference is that their behavior isn’t fueled by security concerns. They are just being assholes because they think that’s how rich people are supposed to act.

A Lack Of Empathy

Researchers theorize that the presence of luxury, reminders of conspicuous consumption, causes people to be less empathetic. Those who shop in and around luxury stores actually consider themselves better than others around them. That feeling of superiority changes how one views people in need. The assumption made is that anyone in need must be of a lower social class or otherwise they wouldn’t be in need.

That lack of empathy is something we see growing across what we would previously have considered upper middle class. As socio-economic strata flatten out, those who perceive themselves to be at the upper end of the ladder look for more visible ways to separate themselves from those they consider to be lower. These people can actually be mean in how they deal with other people, and especially those who ask them for any kind of assistance. They are completely lacking in empathy, even though they’re not all that different from the people around them.

A Little Kindness Goes A Long Way

Even in this less-than-friendly climate, there are still those who do help, who do have a touch of compassion. People in this study were not asked for money or any kind of contribution that might put them at any actual risk. Some were asked to simply watch a person in a wheelchair while the other person retrieved packages. The young women asked some if they could borrow a cell phone to make an emergency call. When removed from the obvious presence of luxury, people responded with overwhelming kindness.

These results make for some interesting correlations. Do money and/or luxury make us worse people? Do we really think that wearing a luxury label makes us better than our fellow humans? Are we really good people at heart who are too easily swayed? Hopefully, this study opens the door for more. If luxury brands are going to affect how we interact with people to such a strong degree, we need to understand more about the causal factors and how they might be addressed. The last thing our world needs is to encourage any greater absence of empathy.

Meanwhile, if we want to shop around nice people, perhaps we’d best stick to shopping at Target.

Advertising / Fashion / PotD

You Better Shop Around

July 12, 2016

Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard. —Paul McCartney

Shopping has changed and using a single source is rarely a good idea

Today, July 12, is the big Amazon Prime sale. Think of it as second Christmas. Sales are huge. People who never shop online make purchases during this sale. Traffic numbers are immense. The best deals sell out in a flash. Every other retailer on the Internet cringes when the online juggernaut has this sale. Amazon is so huge, so overwhelming, that no one can afford to compete. Even Wal-Mart doesn’t try to match prices. They do offer free shipping with no minimum purchase, but that’s nowhere near the savings some Amazon deals offer.

This is the way shopping works now. Deep sales, free shipping, and everyone has to find a way to compete with the big guys. There’s always a sale somewhere. No one ever pays list price. Even Amazon stopped showing list prices. Instead, they just show the sale price because that’s what they know people want to see when they shop online. The sale price.

Luxury goods have been in a free-fall all year. Discounters, outlet shops, mid-market retailers, and re-sellers are where all the business is going. Online fashion magazine Business of Fashion says stores need to look and think more like Facebook. The op-ed by John Bricker says that stores need to be more of a social gathering place, not just a place to shop. Coffee bars, art galleries, and social events are all part of the shopping experience as Bricker imagines it.

I’m not sure he goes far enough, though. People still shop around. Let’s look at alternatives.

Tighter Integration

Bricker’s article mentions that women in the 25-35 age group pre-shop, arriving at a store already prepared for what they want. Why didn’t they go ahead and make the purchase online? They want to feel what they’re getting. That’s not surprising, but retailers are still not playing that strategy to their full advantage. The online experience needs to merge with the brick-and-mortar experience so tightly that shoppers consider it a single event.

For example, if a woman finds a set of sheets online that appear to be what she wants, she should be able to mark and save that product without putting it in a shopping cart. She already knows she’s not making the purchase online, so why would she put the item in a cart? Yet, if she doesn’t, she loses the location of the item and may have difficulty finding it when she wants to go back. Then, when she gets to the store, she has difficulty finding the sheets she wants midst all the stacks of other sheets. If she doesn’t find them quickly, she leaves frustrated.

Stores would do better to lock down that sale by doing three things:

Provide a way to save items of interest online
Encourage the shopper to visit the nearest store to see that item
Use the store’s app to guide the shopper to interested items when they arrive at the store.

Just those three things would increase actual sales by at least 10%.

Help Customers Compare Prices

This is taking a tactic once used in large New York department stores and giving it a digital comeback. Retailers know people shop around online looking for the best deals. Let them do the same in store as well. Wi-Fi connected apps at displays could easily list the price of an item and then show what the same item sells for both online and at other brick-and-mortar stores in the immediate area.

What this strategy does is keep a customer in the store. You don’t want to run the risk of them walking out the door to compare prices and never coming back. That already happens far too often for most stores. By allowing customers to comparison shop right there in the store, the retailer could choose to match a competitors price, provide coupons to apply to the sale, and inherently increase the stickiness of keeping people in the store longer.

Of course, this means marketing people have to do a better job watching competitors’ pricing, and that can be a very difficult job. However, with the ability to search instantly across a wide number of sites, building an app that would track such competition on the fly shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. For all I know, that software may already exist. If it does, though, it needs to be used more efficiently.

Make The Store A Destination

We read a lot about Millennials looking for experiences. Retailers can tap into that by making shopping more of a destination; a place one wants to go even if they’re not actively in the market for anything the store offers. Sorry, but coffee and art are yesterday’s marketing tactics. Retailers today need to find more event-driven and exciting reasons for people to come through their doors and shop.

I still remember when a specific sporting goods store opened in Atlanta with a 40-foot climbing wall in the store. My boys loved going to that store just to climb the wall. Sure enough, we purchased something every time we went. When that store was bought-out by a competitor, though, they took out the climbing wall. Care to guess how many times I’ve been in any of that retailer’s stores since? Zero. I’ve no immediate need for their products, so I walk on by.

Whether online or brick-and-mortar, retailers have to do more than just offer sales to get people to look. If I were CMO of a major chain right now I would be looking for some way to make stores attractive to Pokèmon Go players. What the store sells is irrelevant. Getting more people through door inevitably means more people are going to shop. Playing to social trends rather than marketing trends may be the stronger strategy for the future.

Increase Visibility Of High Need Items

Briker also mentions that people separate their shopping into two groups: wants and needs. They buy the needs first, often without much comparison shopping, then shop around for the things in their want list. The traditional tactic has been to put high-need items toward the back of the store so that people have to walk past everything else, increasing the possibility of an impulse by. For many years, that strategy has worked.

What grocery store chains such as Kroger have found, though, is that placing high need items such as milk, eggs, and bread near the front of the store, close to the checkout, increases brand loyalty among consumers. When a busy mom needs to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home from work or between shuttling kids from soccer practice to piano lessons, she remembers the store that saves her from walking all the way to the back. She’s more likely to return to the same store when she needs to buy a full basket of groceries.

Fashion retailers, especially department stores, could learn a lot from this tactic. Consider what shoppers most likely need and make it accessible without having to traipse all over the store. A hair straightener is not likely to be a must-have-right-now purchase, but a lipstick is. Sports socks are not sexy, but when the drier eats half your last pair you need a replacement before you go running in the morning. Build brand loyalty among a generation not inclined to be loyal.

Shop Around

More retailers need to consider throwing out the playbook and completely re-examine what it means for people to shop. Even those in the over-65 age group don’t shop with the same habits as they did ten years ago. Everything about shopping is new. The winners are going to be those who don’t look like retailers. Embrace innovation and realize that one has to meld into society to benefit from it.

Fashion / PotD

An Ethical Wardrobe

June 8, 2016

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. —Albert Schweitzer

charles i. letbetter - an ethical wardrobe

We need clothes. We want clothes. But must each purchase we make hurt someone else? Can one have an ethical wardrobe?

I had a wardrobe crisis occur a couple of weeks ago. I looked down at my shoes, the one pair of black, slip-resistant shoes I’ve worn every day for over a year and a half, and saw a hole. I knew what was coming next. Because of the unbalanced nature of my walk, the right shoe always wears a hole in the same place: the inside seam where the upper meets the sole. Every time. The hole starts small enough but expands quickly and is not repairable. I was going to have to buy new shoes.

I hate having to buy clothes. I especially dislike having to buy new clothes as long as there is a reasonable and ethical alternative. Shoes, however, are the one thing I’ve learned to buy new, and to spend a little money. Sure, I could go to a discount shoe place and get a pair for$20, but I’m lucky if those last six months. I want a pair of shoes that lasts at least a year, longer if I don’t wear them every day. Shoes are a justifiable expense. Sort of. I still look for sales and ended up actually purchasing two pair so that neither wears out quite so quickly. I shouldn’t have to buy shoes again for at least three-four years.

That logic doesn’t apply to everything in my wardrobe, though. There is very little in my wardrobe that is less than five years old. I have a couple of sweaters that I’ve retired after 15 years of wearing and washing. About half the black shirts I wear every day are over ten years old. When I do occasionally need to replace one, thrift stores make more sense than do department or fast fashion stores. By shopping for previously worn clothes, I’m keeping something out of a landfill, which is often as much as 30% discarded clothing. It’s an ethical thing for me, not really a standard to which I hold anyone else.

If you’ve seen me, you know my personal style is not exactly on-trend. I soon could be, perhaps. Marc Jacobs has officially declared 1980s retro back in style. The problem with that, on a personal level, is that I’m about 436 sizes larger now than I was in the 80s. Even if I still had all those stylish (cough-cough) threads from back then, there’s no way that I would still be able to fit my ample dad body into clothes that did a good job of making my butt look almost attractive (something that was much more a concern then than it is now). Does that mean I can ethically justify buying new clothes that look like the clothes I wore 30 years ago? Probably not.

Having an ethical wardrobe is more important to me than having a stylish ensemble for every day. There are multiple reasons for holding that view, but fundamental to that reasoning is that I don’t want to get dressed every morning knowing that what I’m wearing was assembled by a child in Bangladesh who is thrilled to be making $73 a month and is using all that to help support his/her family. Yes, I really do think about those things in the dark at 4:00 AM. I’m also not a fan of adding to Amancio Ortega’s $57 billion empire (he own’s Zara, among other fashion-related things). I’m especially not a fan of ripping off designers, which is what fast fashion retailers do on a daily basis.

The ethical implications of what I have in my closet are significant. I’m not ignorant of the ethical challenges that occur in the fashion world. I know that what I buy individually, while it may seem small and insignificant on one level, becomes part of a greater whole. When I make a purchase, no matter where or what it is, I am aligning myself with a larger group of people making like-minded decisions and it is in the rise and fall of those groups from which trends are set. If I want to encourage a trend away from cheaply-sourced materials, then I have to refrain from buying cheaply sourced materials. Likewise, buying clothes manufactured in New York’s garment district, for example, encourages domestic production in an environment where workers are more likely to be treated fairly.

Still, if the 80s are indeed coming back … how do I not get in on some of that action? I felt good about my fashion choices back then. I had multiple pairs of Levi’s 501 jeans back then, and they were still being made in Northern California at the time. Levi’s has moved production south of the border though and I’m not sure one can even find 501 jeans in the store anymore. Shopping directly from Marc Jacob’s isn’t a financial option, either. How do I enjoy this momentary global lapse of stylish sanity while still holding to the ethical standards I’ve set for my wardrobe?

A couple of years ago, a Canadian artist, Sarah Lazarovic, wrote a book, A Bunch Of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy. This very interesting young woman went a full year without buying any new clothes. None. I know a lot of people who would begin to hyperventilate at the thought of going more than a week without making a new purchase of some kind. The book is quite interesting and, while everything she has to say may not align with someone else’s specific situation, she did come up with this interesting pyramid she calls the “buyerarchy of needs” to help one make a bit more sense of their fashion purchases. While she is not preaching a strict ethical behavior, the implications and applications are there. Take a look:

The Buyerarchy of Needs. Copyright Sarah Lazarovic

The concept is pretty straight forward. Buying something new should be the last option. Using what you have, perhaps even repurposing what you have, should be where we all start. There’s no good reason why we should be completely turning over our wardrobes every few months. If you’re looking at a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing, consider borrowing from someone who’s already been there. Kat and her friends swap clothes back and forth, both adult and children’s. Thrift, and I would add Vintage, shopping are my personal preference (though, I would warn, not everything in a vintage shop is necessarily original from that period). Making things yourself is one of those things that varies from person to person. I’m useless in that department.

Does that mean that I still don’t watch labels for where garments are made? No, not at all. Even when I’m thrift or vintage shopping I still look at labels and avoid those I know are unethically sourced. But, following the precepts of this pyramid brings us a lot closer to having an ethical wardrobe than we might achieve on our own.

Again, the standards I set for myself are not necessarily applicable to anyone else. You have to decide for yourself whether an ethical approach to shopping is even a concern. But for me, whether I’m buying a new pair of shoes or a t-shirt to replace the one that just disintegrated in the wash, how I shop matters. A lot.

PotD

Retail Falls From Grace

May 12, 2016

I’m paranoid about shopping. I get irritable. I find it tedious and taxing. People say shopping is retail therapy, but I need therapy after shopping. —Anushka Sharma

You know that mall store where you once bought at least half if not all your wardrobe? Hope you’re not emotionally attached because they’re failing

I was in a mall last week for the first time in a few months. The day before, venerable mall chain Abercrombie & Fitch had announced they would be closing 150 stores and they started Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. I watched from a small distance as they opened that morning, a noticeable weariness in the person’s posture. There was no better-than-thou attitude and only a weary smile as I passed.

Fashion retail as we have known it in the past may well be in need of hospice care. While it’s not dead yet, the condition of fashion retail shows every sign of having a terminal disease and its recovery, at least in the form with which we have become accustomed. We are already familiar with the problems big department stores such as Macy’s and Sears have had. Now, fashion specific retailers who have been struggling the past five years are beginning to look as though they may be on their last legs. Retail has fallen from grace and we don’t seem to be inclined to restore it, or even let it survive in its current incarnation.

Most recently, GAP is starting to feel irrelevant after they announced earlier this week that April same-store sales fell another seven percent from same time last year. GAP is rapidly running out of options. No one is walking through their doors. I know, I watched, seated in one of the malls comfy chairs. For 30 minutes I sat there. Dozens of people walked past, but none of those even slowed enough to look through the windows. Finch Ratings lowered GAP’s default rating to junk status yesterday, further deflating any energy left in the stock. If they are not in full-scale liquidation by the holidays I will be quite surprised.

So much has changed from when a young Jewish immigrant named Adam Gimble opened his first dry goods store in Vincennes, Indiana back in the 1850s. As he moved from Vincennes to Danville, Illinois and then Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the joke at the time was that profits from one store alone wasn’t enough to feed Gimble’s seven sons. Gimble was a pioneer in the concept of chain retailing, among other things, and the concept around which he built his stores is still dominant in retailing even now.

But retail has never been easy. Movies and popular fiction made the competition between the Herald Square Gimbles and the Macy’s store across the street quite famous, but by the time Miracle on 34tj Street made a big deal about the two stores and their holiday promotions, all three of Macy’s founding partners had been dead over 40 years and the costs of expansion were burdening the company. Both stores went through various iterations in an attempt to survive, but Gimbles closed for good in 1985, and Macy’s sold to Federated Department Stores in 1994. While Federated has kept the Macy’s brand and merged others into that framework, it has still struggled continuously.

Fashion retail is not an easy business, and now that malls themselves have fallen out of favor as a family social destination, the malls are either closing or having to invest millions of dollars in an attempt to get more people through the doors. Tom McGee, president and chief executive officer of the International Council of Shopping Centers, told Associated Press:

“Shopping centers and the physical retail experience is becoming much more experiential. People want to have experiences when they go out. They want to experience restaurants. They want movie theaters. They want that kind of all-in aspect. They want the aesthetics and the look to be something that is engaging and appealing to them.”

Even if malls can make the aesthetics and periphery of a shopping experience more appealing, though, that doesn’t mean that people will actually buy clothing from the same retailers they did 5-10 years ago. In addition to a continuing growth in online shopping, which may grow dramatically if more fashion labels adopt a see now, buy now approach to their runway shows, re-sale stores are taking off, both brick-and-mortar, as well as online, and they’re coming with deep pockets and strong marketing strategies. Contemporary wardrobe styles care little whether the Armani jacket is from this year’s collection or five years ago. To the extent that luxury goods are presumably made better and last longer, they can be sold and re-sold numerous times. Each time a garment is re-sold, that’s cash out of the hands of traditional fashion retailers.

In one sense, it’s rather exciting to know that we’re witnessing a dramatic transformation in the fashion retail business, one that almost certainly is going to benefit consumers more in the long run. At the same time, though, it’s somewhat disheartening to know that some of our favorite brands and retailers may not survive the transition. Progress always works this way, you know. Not everyone survives, and in this case being big might actually be a handicap.

If you’re one of those people who really like A&F or GAP clothing, you might want to stock up now, though. Limited store closings are definitely coming and both brands are on life-support. Last rites will come in the form of deep discounting this fall. Oh, how the mighty and impenetrable have fallen. Keep watching.

Current Issues / Fashion

Shopping Habits Die Ugly

April 26, 2016

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping. —Bo Derek

You’ve changed your shopping habit and it’s killing a quintessential piece of America

I’m old enough to remember having to go downtown to shop. Back then, all the stores were downtown. They were open from 10:00 AM until 5:00 PM except on Thursdays, when they stayed open late, until 7:00 PM. At least, that’s how it was in the small Kansas and Oklahoma towns we called home. Back then, if both your parents worked, your shopping choices were either Thursday night or Saturday, neither of which was an especially pleasant experience. Just having to be downtown at night could be harrowing.

I remember the first large indoor mall I visited: Woodland Hills Mall, Tulsa. At the time, its location seemed rather far out, well removed not only from downtown but most of Tulsa’s suburbs. There was nothing around but fields and pasture. Shopping there was a surreal experience and we wondered why in the world anyone would want to drive all the way out there. If you were to visit that location now, however, not only is the area heavily populated, it’s had to go through three or four efforts at revitalization to avoid becoming run down.

Recently, someone gave Kat’s dad, aka “Grandpa Bob,” a real treasure: a 1969 Rand-McNally Atlas. Looking at the map for Indianapolis back then, I-465 was only completed on the west side and the primary destination was Lafayette Square Mall. Drive along North Lafayette now and there are times the mall looks completely abandoned and even the few stores that do remain are small, discount-driven stores with goods of highly questionable origin and quality.

Our shopping habits are changing again, and as they do we’re slowly but surely killing off what has become a bastion of American retail and excess: the shopping mall. Already, there’s an entire website dedicated to tracking mall closures. Now, Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm, is saying that department stores need to close hundreds of locations if they are to have any hope of returning to profitability. In short, there are too many malls with too many department stores and it’s bringing the entire retail sector down.

The plight of department stores isn’t new and has been fairly well documented. Just last week Sears announced it would be closing 78 more stores (mostly KMart stores) this year. Macy’s warned last September that it would close 40 stores this year. We’ve seen this coming for a few years and that has, if anything, accelerated the rate of change in our shopping habits. We’re buying more online and from discounters now than we ever have.

Yet, more closures are needed if these once ubiquitous department stores are to stay in business. Green Street’s report suggests Sears close nearly half its existing locations. JCPenney needs to close approximately 320 stores, while Nordstrom probably needs to shutter 30 locations, and Macy’s needs to ax another 70 on top of the previously announced 40. All this is necessary if the store brands are to remain profitable.

Store brands are likely to take heed to this advice. They’re watching what’s happening to similar retailers in the UK and it’s not a pretty sight. UK retailer BHS went into administration yesterday, a prelude to possible bankruptcy as did menswear giant Austin Reed. And the once popular mall stalwart Aeropostale was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on Friday after its stock price has failed to break the $1 mark since last September.

All this spells death for traditional suburban malls who depend on large department stores as their anchors. Malls have seen anchors cut the amount of floor space in some locations and even abandon leases in some others. When that happens, shopping at those malls screeches to a sharp stop. Smaller inner-mall stores, which rely on traffic driven by the anchors, quickly fold and leave. The next thing mall management knows, their vacancy rate exceeds 40% and once that happens the end days are near.

Let’s face it, though: no one really likes shopping at the mall anymore. This isn’t the 80s. We would much rather shop discounters such as TJ Maxx or Marshalls and when we do shop a major department store we’re more likely to go in, find what we need, and leave. We don’t have enough expendable income to waste time just wandering around and exploring the mall.

No one has said yet whether they’ll follow Green Street’s advice. If they do, though, you can most likely kiss your mall shopping habit goodbye. With store closures in the numbers that the report recommends, only a fraction of mostly newer malls would be able to survive. Within two years, the entire retail landscape could change dramatically.

I find it a bit ironic that suburban shopping centers and malls were responsible for killing many downtown shopping districts and now those malls are finding out what it’s likely to become obsolete themselves. Few downtowns ever recovered. Mall deaths may be even more permanent.

So, get your food court fix now and maybe make an extra trip to Spencer’s Gifts for those naughty little things. The mall is one shopping experience whose future is not pretty.

Fashion / Photography / PotD

Pictures Or It Didn’t Happen

February 15, 2016

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.—George Lucas

The fascination with Instagram and Pinterest is more than an annoying habit; it’s changing the world

We’re calling them Generation Z, those who are currently teenagers, and already they’re having an impact on the world. Wth smartphones glued to their hands and cell phone cameras ever at the ready, one of the traits this generation has learned from the Millennials right before them is that experiences matter over materialism. The big difference between the two group of youngsters, though, is that Gen Z is finding ways to make everything they do an experience, whether it’s the ride to school, ice cream afterward, or brushing their teeth before bed. Everything ends up on Instagram. And if it’s going to be on Instagram, one has to look good doing it.

Helping teens decide what makes them look good is Pinterest. Unlike their parents, who use the social media app for things like recipes and decorating ideas, Gen Z pins pictures of street styles and ads from their favorite online magazines so they can put together their own wardrobe combinations; a little of this, a touch of that, and they have a look that is all their own.

Now, imagine what it would have been like had my generation had cameras at the ready and an easy distribution method when we were teens. While we almost certainly would have taken just as many pictures as teens today do, what we captured would have likely been different. For starters, I’m not sure how often we would have been able to see anything due to the overwhelming amount of smoke that was everywhere. Even the few of us who didn’t have a pack of cigarettes tucked away somewhere had plenty of friends who did, so even a picture from the back of the driver’s ed car would have had smoke. No wonder we’re all dying.

Would looking at pictures of ourselves all the time given us a better idea of what to wear? While I’m still seeing 70s influences for the third season in a row, most of us actually had the fashion sense of a squirrel, and if one looks at the majority of us today, that hasn’t changed much. Of course, we country kids weren’t as big on the super-wide bell bottom pants as the city kids were because they were a hazard; those flared legs were dangerous around farm implements, so we tended to keep our 501s with a boot leg for practical reasons.

One thing for certain, though, had we had phones back then with the capabilities of those today, we would have captured some kick-ass music events. Imagine recording AC-DC, The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Buffet, Foghat, Chicago, The Doobie Brothers, Three Dog Night, or Led Zepplin back in their prime! Bands that are being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month were still young, the concerts were legendary, and what happened after those concerts is responsible for Generation X. Imagine how great it would be if we had captured that all on Periscope and then saved it!

Being able to take plenty of pictures as we go through life sounds like a great thing, but there are consequences to such an over indulgence. The first one, right off the bat, is storage; it was a problem when I was a kid and it remains a problem now. We weren’t terribly shy about taking pictures when we considered it worthwhile, but where are those pictures now? Chances are, a few are stuffed in envelopes at the back of a drawer or file cabinet. My mother was into scrapbooking as she got older; what remains of ours are in a couple of large plastic containers under a bed at my brother’s house. Teens today, though, tend to not keep their pictures all that long. When the card on their phone begins to get full, they start deleting. They’re too young to realize the value of the pictures they’re taking today. After all, they’ll be taking more pictures tomorrow. Unfortunately, of all those experiences they are having, it’s not until years later that they’ll realize which ones were really important.

The other consequence is that taking so many pictures and sharing them changes how we shop. An article in Busines Insider this morning details how the Gen Z fascination with pictures and Instagram and other social media is killing more traditional retailers like the Gap, J. Crew, and Abercrombie & Fitch. Not only that, but it is that same attitude that is leading an increasing number of designers to shift their runway calendar so that instead of showing a season ahead for department store buyers, more and more are showing current season and allowing for instant online purchases immediately after the show, skipping both the buyer and the department stores all together.

How and when we take pictures, and our fascination with sharing them, changes our decision-making process, from where we go on vacation to what we’re having for dinner. Since almost everything we do ultimately has some economic tie to it, that impulse to share everything online is dramatically altering the world’s economy, for both better and worse.

When I first picked up a camera some 30+ years ago, my dream, along with those of my colleagues, was that maybe one of my pictures might have an impact on the world. Just one. Today, kids with smartphones are changing the world with every picture they take.

And more than ever, if there are no pictures, it didn’t happen.

Current Issues / PotD

Matters Of Polite Conversation

February 6, 2016

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.—Truman Capote

“Let them eat cake” is a fine party philosophy until you run out of cake. Then what?

There is no predicting the future, no matter how hard we might try. There are prognosticators and statisticians working like crazy in an attempt to predict how Super Bowl 50 is going to play out tomorrow. Everyone wants a good game, and everyone wants their favorite team to win. However, there are times when that just doesn’t happen. In fact, there are five Super Bowls, three involving the Denver Broncos, there were nothing short of blowouts. They were, in order of severity:

Super Bowl XXII – Washington Redskins 42 – Denver Broncos 10
Super Bowl XXVII – Dallas Cowboys 52 – Buffalo Bills 17
Super Bowl XLVIII – Seattle Seahawks 43 – Denver Broncos 8
Super Bowl XX – Chicago Bears 46 – New England Patriots 10
Super Bowl XXIV – San Francisco 49ers 55 – Denver Broncos 10

Those scores are rather depressing if one is a Broncos fan. No matter how much one might want to see Peyton Manning go out on top, the very real numbers are not necessarily in his favor. There is a frightening chance that by the end of the halftime show there’s not much left to do besides eat hot wings and chat with whomever is left in the room. This could get awkward, especially if one happens to be at a Super Bowl party where one doesn’t know many people. Yeah, we’ve been there.

However, and you can thank me for this later, I have compiled a list of topics that are great conversation starters. You have some time between now and tomorrow to study up a little bit so that should there be an unforeseen lull in the game, you can break the silence and monotony with one of these gems. You may be the one who actually saves the party! Any of these can work, so take a good look and find a couple with which you can get comfortable.

Traffic fatalities took a huge jump last year. When one considers the increase as a percentage, 9.3 doesn’t sound like much. Yet, in terms of real numbers, we’re looking at an increase of 2,200 and those numbers are still preliminary; they could go up. Now, there’s no need for complete panic just yet. When one adjusts for the numbers of cars on the road, which also increased, the percentage falls to five percent, which isn’t nearly as alarming. What seems to be the difference? Two major contributors seem apparent. One is the decline in road conditions. We’ve heard about our crumbling infrastructure for a few years and now that lack of attention is costing real lives. The second is distracted driving, with cell phones being the primary culprit. That particular problem is 100 % preventable. Play this topic off one of the many new car ads running during tomorrow’s game.
A sale isn’t always as good as it looks. Everyone’s looking for a bargain, right? In fact, we all know someone who enjoys bragging about the deals they’ve scored. They never pay regular price for anything. However, many stores, especially department stores such as Nordstrom and Kohls, are facing an increased number of class-action lawsuits based on what consumers consider deceptive sale pricing. Shoppers see a 75% off sign, but fail to read the small print that qualifies how that 75% is actually calculated. There are other times when sale prices and regular prices appear to be the same. JC Penney set aside a whopping $50 million to settle a suit claiming their 40% off prices were actually their regular prices. Designer Michael Kors settled a suit claiming made-for-outlet goods were misrepresented as discounted regular clothing. Stores often settle these suits so they don’t have to admit any wrongdoing. Remember that when your favorite retailer’s ad pops up on the screen between downs.
Twitter is changing to be more like Facebook. This topic may only work if you’re watching the big game with people who are constantly looking at their smartphones. People who don’t use social media, and especially those who don’t use Twitter, won’t give a damn. Those who do, though, are likely to be furious. Switching the timeline feed over to an algorithm similar to the kind Facebook uses means that tweets will not necessarily appear in chronological order. Popular and trending topics would appear first. On one hand, it might help sort out what’s important from all the white noise that Twitter attracts. At the same time, though, those who don’t have 20 million followers might have difficulty getting their tweets seen at all. While Twitter has yet to officially respond to this Buzzfeed article, the lack of a denial has the hashtag #RIPTwitter trending. Use this when you see everyone at the party staring at their phone.
Beer is getting into the fashion business. In a way, this isn’t the biggest revelation in the world, but given the number of beer ads shown during the game, it’s an easy segue for conversation. What’s going on is that more beer companies, from small-label craft beers to mass-produced brands such as Heineken (which does have a new ad during the game) are doing collaborations with designers to work their logos into clothing designs. We’re talking about more than just the PBR fishing hat or the Bud Light t-shirt here. Brands are spending major cash to have their brands show up subtly on department store shelves attached to designer names. They’re also likely to show up in places like the comforter on the bed at your favorite B&B, or the shades your girlfriend is wearing. While the collaborations haven’t gotten too noisy yet, if those $5 million ads don’t work we may see Clydesdale imprints on the catwalk come fall.
The Zika virus has the UN asking countries to loosen abortion restrictions. Warning: only use this topic if the game is a complete blowout and you’re desperate for some aggressive action. You won’t find this in any US newspaper because, to date, Zika isn’t an American problem. By summer, though, when the mosquito population increases and people are out more, we could see the issue here as well. Zika is a devastating mosquito-born disease that primarily affects the brain size of newborns. There is no cure, and to date there is no sure means of prevention. Pregnant women are, of course, most at risk, but it is worth noting that the disease can also be spread through sexual activity. The Zika outbreak has been declared a global health concern and even insurance companies, who are not prone to wanting government interference, are asking for help in finding some way to slow this deadly disease. Ths one is certain to start a lively conversation, though, so don’t bring it up unless the game is just so far gone that you’re need something dramatic to prevent you from stabbing your eyes with a colored toothpick.

Sure, we all hope the game is close and that you never have any reason to take your eyes off the screen. We also hope you don’t get food poisoning for wings that have been left out too long. Still, it is better to be prepared than caught sitting in a quiet room where everyone can hear you fart.

And if all else fails, try stripping in front of the TV. If that doesn’t start a conversation, it’s time to leave.

Fashion

Sleeping Through Men’s Fashion Weeks

January 19, 2016

There’s no such thing as a designer of menswear—it’s only history. The suit around the world is based on the English suit, which began in about 1670.– Hardy Amies

charles i. letbetter - sleeping through men's fashion

No one cares WHO Sam Norris III is wearing, but more how he looks wearing it … in the water

The digital team at Vogue has been doing its damnedest to remind me that men’s fashion weeks are still going on. Here I am wanting to sort through pre-fall collections in preparation for the fall women’s ready-to-wear season, which begins February 11 in New York, and my email inbox is full of pictures of men in suits or jeans or suits with jeans trying to grab my attention. Sorry folks, it’s not working.

I don’t mean to disparage the men’s fashion industry. The sector has seen tremendous growth over the past three years and even men’s fragrances crossed the billion-dollar sales mark last year. Neither can one say that men don’t care about what they wear. Men can be every bit as meticulous about their clothing as are women. I know several who are absolutely, disturbingly, OCD about their wardrobe.

However, men’s fashion still is a long way from having the overwhelming impact of women’s ready-to-wear. Not only do men’s lines not have anywhere near the same sales numbers, they don’t hold men’s interest, and men are not the obsessive fans of specific designers in the same way as women. I’m even going to go out on a limb here and say that 98% of men not only don’t care who made the shirt they’re wearing right now, but they don’t have a clue. Interestingly enough, they’re more likely to know who made their pants (I’m wearing black Levis today) and their shoes than any other garments.

Why are men, generally speaking, not fashion horses like their female counterparts? Why doesn’t men’s fashion hold our interest? There are some distinct reasons and you should know them.

Men are, traditionally, more practical in their wardrobe choices. Playing to traditional gender-oriented stereotypes, men still choose a significant portion of their wardrobe based upon what is appropriate for their occupation. These are the men for whom the term “blue collar” was coined. They need clothes that are sturdy, can stand up to rough conditions, daily washings, and severe stress on the fabric. Pre-torn jeans are of no interest to the man working outdoors in sub-freezing weather. They’d rather drop good money on a solid pair of coveralls that will last them several years than a suit with shiny shoes.
Men don’t desire wide variety in their wardrobe. Have you met me? I wear black. That’s it. I have dress ensembles and casual ensembles, but everything in my closet is designed so that I don’t have to think too hard about what to wear each morning. I recently added a shawl collared cardigan to the collection and chose the design for one specific reason: it goes with everything. Pierre Cardin famously said: “I can go all over the world with just three outfits: a blue blazer and gray flannel pants, a gray flannel suit, and black tie.”
More men are color blind. No, this isn’t a joke. Men really are more likely to be at least partially color blind than women, and the trait is genetic, passed on from father to son. As a result, men are not as likely to respond to colorful designs and patterns with the same enthusiasm as women. In the US, ten percent of men are totally colorblind, versus only 0.4 percent of women. Ethnicity also plays into this problem, with Caucasian men being far more likely to be color blind than Asian (five percent) or African (four percent) men. Eskimo men have the lowest rate, 0.01 percent, but they don’t tend to spend much on high fashion.
Men don’t like to shop for clothes. We’ll spend all day looking at tools, cars, computers, or video games, but pull a man into a department store to look at clothes and expect a groan, at least internally. Even when we know we need new clothes, we would rather walk in, grab the first thing we see that fits, and leave. This plays into another interesting statistic that men are more likely to buy their clothes online. Depending upon which study one considers, men’s online wardrobe shopping outpaces women’s by 20-30 percent! And what do we buy most? Replacements for the things we already have.
Men pay less attention to what’s “in style.” Remember the leisure suits and wide ties of the 70s? As horrible as that style was, it lasted well over half a decade because men, as a group, care less about current fashions. While women anxiously await the new season’s clothes hitting the stores, and are ultimately responsible for the fast-fashion trend that’s driving designers crazy, men are more content continuing to wear the same thing from season to season. Unless a garment is stained or torn or no longer fits, we’re still likely to wear it.

Please let me emphasize, again, that these are generalizations. We all know people who are exceptions and those people are absolutely wonderful. However, for fashion to be viable it has to appeal to masses, not individuals, and men’s fashion has yet to achieve that desirable goal. So, dear friends at Vogue, please stop filling my inbox with photos of today’s DSquared² runway. I’ll catch up with the brilliant Caten brothers in a month when they’re showing women’s wear.

Until then, I think I have some napping to do.

PotD

5 Signs You Are A Fashion Failure

November 28, 2015

charles i. letbetter - 5 signs you're a fashion failure

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.—Coco Chanel

Fashion is something that eludes 98 percent of all people. Take this wedding dress, for example, from designer Catherine Fritsch; as wonderful a concept as it is, the dress didn’t actually sell until years after this photo was initially released. The problem isn’t with the dress, but the not-quite-in-touch fashion opinions of those who turned it down. Thinking of all the brides who went with dresses as staid and boring as their now-married lives makes me sad. Fashion is about expression and personality and when one chooses less-than-interesting fashion for themselves they’re not exactly putting their best foot forward.

This photo also reminds me of just how much people change over the years. Originally taken in 2011, our model, Erin, was a bright, young college student working on her degree. She’s now married with a beautiful little girl and is head of a relatively significant government agency. Makeup artist Christopher Thompson now runs a haunted B&B in Atlanta, Indiana. Catherine Fritsch rebranded last year and her Rue Violet line generally sells quite well. Isn’t it wonderful to watch people grow?

Speaking of growing, let’s get to today’s list:

5 Signs You Are A Fashion Failure

When you see a dog wearing the same outfit as you and the dog wears it better.
Just because you saw something on last season’s runway, or your favorite celebrity, doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. Consider how a garment is cut, whether it’s full or tailored. Full cuts are more generous and work with a wider variety of body types. Tailored looks, though, especially those designed to be tight around the hips and waist, make the wearer look like a sausage bursting from its casing if their curves don’t match the designer’s ideal. It’s better to have a wardrobe that actually looks good on you rather than trying to adopt someone else’s style.

When there’s no Pantone® number to match anything you’re wearing.
A couple of caveats at the beginning of this one: if you’re legitimately color blind you get a pass as well as if you’re young enough your mother still dresses you. For those who don’t know, Pantone® is the color-matching system used by printers to make sure they’re printing the correct color. Pantone has identified hundreds of thousands of shades of everything and indexed them numerically; they pretty much have ever visible color covered. Yet, every once in a while I’ll come across someone who has put a color combination on their body that even the Pantone book doesn’t cover it. No, dear, it doesn’t look good no matter what your friends say; they’re laughing behind your back. There are color wheels and charts all over the Internet. Use one.

When people follow you because they’re sure you must be on your way to a circus.
I’ve seen designers send some pretty bizarre looks down the runway, but nothing beats the collision of styles that occurs when some people start mixing separates. Not everyone has a talent for matching styles and fabrics well. As a result, we see things like polka dots and ruffles mixed with denim and lace and two or three different animal prints along with stripes running in three different directions and eight contrasting colors all in the same look. No. Stop. Barnum & Bailey is not a personal style. Seek help.

When you’re wearing fishnet and the park ranger gives you a ticket for carrying over the limit.
The only thing that really looks good in fishnet every time is fish. Sure, we see a lot of it on the runways, but the best applications are as accents or carefully matched accessories, and even those don’t always work in the real world where we have to figure out how to dress ourselves. Remember, fishnet exposes what lies beneath it. Do you really need what is under your fishnet exposed? Also, just because fishnet is flexible doesn’t mean its tensile strength should be tested. Fishnet is ultimately a tailored element; don’t push it.

When the tags in all your clothes say “Made In Bangladesh.”
Check the labels in your clothes before you buy anything. If the label says made in Bangladesh, Taiwan, Singapore, or Vietnam, know that your garment is assembled by the poorest of the poor, typically in conditions worse than those in which we house our farm animals. Among those, Bangladesh is likely the worst. If you’re buying clothes from H&M, Wal-Mart, Target, Old Navy, Penney’s, K-Mart, or any other discounter, chances are you’re contributing to the economic enslavement of thousands. Read here, here, here, and here for more details, then change your buying habits.

One of the many things I dislike about American buying habits this time of year is the over-emphasis on sales and who has the lowest prices. Fashion isn’t cheap. Quality clothes aren’t often found on the racks of discounters. Where and how you spend your money makes a difference in the lives of thousands of people. In the shopping realm of the holiday season, today is Small Business Saturday. We strongly encourage you to take advantage and look for garments made by local designers. Sure, you’re not going to find any $5 price tags, but your money is more likely to help someone rather than contribute to their enslavement.

Use some common sense, people. Shop smart. Happy holidays.

PotD

8 Solutions To Lousy Sex

November 27, 2015

I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.—Erma Bombeck

Move over, Cosmo, you’re not the only website who can use cheap and tawdry sex headlines to get people’s attention. The difference between our list and those you’ll find elsewhere, though, is that we’ve undertaken years of personal research so we could offer solutions by telling you, with expert authority, what not to do. My only caveat here is that if you are related to me, especially if you’re one of my sons, STOP READING NOW! There are some things family doesn’t need to know.

As for today’s picture, this one is a little over ten years old and remains one of my favorites from when I first moved to Indianapolis. Lovely, open people like this just don’t come along too terribly often and once she moved on there wasn’t anyone to fill the void she left. C’est la vie.

Meanwhile, we have a silly list to which we must attend, which, if nothing else, is better than standing in some stupid line out in the freezing cold:

8 Solutions To Lousy Sex

Stop getting out of bed so damn early to go shopping.
Seriously, where are your priorities? You could actually be in bed, snuggled up with the one you love, ticking that special spot they love, leading up to the best sex ever. But no, instead you are totally wasting your time out in the cold standing in some stupid line and even if your lover is right there with you, this is not sexy and not romantic in any way, shape or form. Geeze. Loser.

Cut back on the food you know gives you gas.
Flatulence is a natural bodily function and to some extent we can’t keep it from happening. However, when you load up with buffalo wings, cheese sauce and cheap beer, what do you think is going to happen? All that garbage you just ate is like shaking up a soda bottle; the gas is going to explode! Why would anyone want to get close when they know that’s going to happen? Why would you even want to do that to yourself? Gross.

For all that is holy, try taking a shower.
While the amount of grooming one does is totally a personal matter, being clean is not and is definitely a reason for lousy sex. In fact, your smell may be keeping you from having any sex at all. Worth noting: this includes those of you who apparently bath in cologne. Stop. It’s not attractive. The best fragrance with which you can greet your lover is fresh soap. Give it a try sometime.

Stop trying all the positions you see on Pornhub.
You do realize porn sex is different from real-world sex, don’t you? Those crazy positions they get in are designed to give the camera a better angle and more light, not for comfort. If you need help with positions, perhaps you should add the Kama Sutra or similar books to your holiday shopping list. Better yet, grab them online and have them shipped so you’re not seen carrying them around in a store; that can be a bit creepy.

Try A Little Tenderness.
Careful, things are rather sensitive down there! Some of the most embarrassing emergency room visits come from putting something down there that doesn’t belong, and yes, that includes hot food. If you’re that damn hungry get a plate. For both men and women, the skin in the groin area is extremely sensitive and no, it is not sexy when you put something stupid down there. This includes champagne and liquor. Don’t do it.

Pay attention to what you’re doing.
I never have understood people who try to watch television or text on their phones while having sex. If you’re that disengaged from that act, you’re not going to have a good time; you’re just going through the motions. Actually paying attention to your lover not only helps the sex, the entire relationship benefits. Explore. Find those auto-erogenous areas above the waist. See how much things improve.

Stay healthy.
No one wants to have sex with a partner who is coughing up a lung or gasping for breath after three minutes. In case you’ve not figured it out yet (and some of you haven’t), sex is an extremely physical activity. Being healthy and in shape factors significantly in your ability to have good, enjoyable sex. And yes, this includes not being overweight. Why? Strenuous physical activity puts stress on your heart. Dying during sex is not acceptable.

Try using a real, live partner every once in a while.
Please tell me I don’t need to explain the benefits of this one. Seriously, though, it’s not going to happen if you don’t get out of that chair, away from in front of the computer, and try meeting people. Clean up. Act nice. Don’t be a douchebag. This is allegedly the time of year for miracles and you’re due. You can thank me later.

We probably could have made this list a lot longer, and I certainly know some people who could use the instruction. I don’t want to overwhelm you, though. Start with these and perhaps we can add more later, when you’re ready. Who knows, you might start the new year happy.

shopping

Retailers don’t care who Ivanka’s daddy is, they’re not carrying her junk.

The Short Version

A Little Background

What The President Said

The Fallout

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Online shopping is where profits are found

The Short Version

A Bit More Detail

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Stores desperately try to prevent huge price increases

The Short Version

Avoiding Sticker Shock

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Sorting out the Business of Fashion report

1. INTENSIFYING VOLATILITY

2. CHINA’S COMEBACK?

3. URBAN ENGINES

4. SHREWDER SHOPPERS

5. GENERATION CORRELATION

6. THE WELLNESS DIVIDEND

7. CHANGING THE RHYTHM

8. ORGANIC GROWTH

9. UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY

10. OWNERSHIP SHAKE-UP

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Sales are up this holiday season, but what if you didn’t shop at all for a year?

What it takes to not shop

Your role in the economy

Striking the right balance

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The days of waiting in line all night for a chance at a bargain are over.

The Myth Of Black Friday

But Wait, Something Is Changing

Controlling Our Greed

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I’m a champion for personal differences. All society should be much more personalized. —George M. Church

A Highly Personalized Life

Nothing You Do Is Secret

The Potential For Abuse

The Internet Of Things

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We live in a disposable society. It’s easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name – we call it recycling. —Neil LaBute

Fast Fashion Is A Dirty Business

A Possible Solution

Will It Really Work

Doing Your Part

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I’ve got seven kids. The three words you hear most around my house are ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, and ‘I’m pregnant’. —Dean Martin

Those Meddling Kids

Some Things Need To Die

Not Letting Them Off The Hook

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I am convinced that there can be luxury in simplicity. —Jil Sander

I Gave At The Office

Faking The Luxury Thing

A Lack Of Empathy

A Little Kindness Goes A Long Way

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Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard. —Paul McCartney

Tighter Integration

Help Customers Compare Prices

Make The Store A Destination

Increase Visibility Of High Need Items

Shop Around

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A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. —Albert Schweitzer

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