Word: retailing
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...being given to the small brands," says Robert Hanson, Levi's brand president. "We compete with them collectively. But we're seeing these brands take Levi's vintage styles and modernize them." Nevertheless, Levi's has taken some lumps from tiny jeans operations like Earl. And in a depressed retail market, the smaller fashion brands and boutiques are posting gains as bigger brands languish on shelves...
...some respects, the brilliant strategies that preserved luxury brands a decade ago have now rendered them somewhat inert at retail. "All the same streets have the same stores with the same window dressing," complained designer Paul Smith at an industry gathering late last year. That's why one of the hottest stores, Colette, in Paris, is a reseller, not a brand-name designer boutique. Colette is a store as editor, picking the hottest stuff from the hottest new designers and presenting it in a techno-style space. Given the brisk traffic in the store, it's no wonder the designer...
...mission of the new wave of stores is to kindle the brand even if the cash register doesn't always ring. "What we're trying to do now is immerse the consumer in activities and experiences that are emotionally based but relevant," says Michael Bills, president of RPA, a retail management-and-design consultancy in Columbus, Ohio. That's a long way from the exclusiveness of Ralph Lauren's classic New York City flagship in the former Rhinelander mansion and Calvin Klein's ultra-urban-cool outlet on Madison Avenue, both trendsetting statements in their day. It's an experience...
...wait just a darn minute. Wouldn't you trade a little interaction for a little selection? "Retail comes down to how you shelve and hang things. That's all you can do," laughs Michael Gabellini, head of Gabellini Associates, who designs stores for Giorgio Armani, Salvatore Ferragamo, Ultimo and Jil Sander...
Gabellini isn't being dismissive of himself or his colleagues. He is simply making the point that behind the glitz is a mission: put the customer in a set--a retail mise-en-scene, he calls it--that seduces him or her into buying. The store, he says, should be "a rational extension of the [fashion] designer." Gabellini spends inordinate amounts of time with the fashion folks, right down to the artisan, trying to understand the craft of each house. Then he puts on his bean-counter hat and assesses the ratio of clothing sales to accessories sales and factors...