Fall 2009

I was talking with a reporter from the retail industry this morning and she wanted to know if people were calling us crazy for relaunching a brand in the economic times that we are currently in. We also had a great discussion about Fall 2009.

In our discussion about Fall 2009, I mentioned the fact that it is well reported that Retail Inventories are down significantly. The question that everyone has, will the consumer not be inspired because they don't have the quantity to choose from? I posed the question, which is more important, will the consumer recognize a shift in the quality of products?

I say this, because it has also been well reported that most major apparel brands have been developing new opening price points for their retail partners. There has been a focus from the retailers to get their current brand/supply chain to come up with an new opening price point that will keep shoppers in the store. Some would call this "trading down", of course at retail we do not like this word and we have spun this as "not trading down", because the shopper is still buying the same brand.

What has not been reported is all the Margin Guarantee money that was supplied to retailers from their Wholesale partners last Fall, after the blood bath that everyone took. This meant a major shift in margins for the wholesale community. This, coupled with these new "Opening Price Points" mean only one thing, a major shift in the quality of products hitting the store shelves for Fall 2009.

If you think about this, manufacturing got killed last year by writing the checks back to the retailers for their margin guarantee, then for Fall 2009, the retailer has also asked for a lower price point. This can only mean one thing, the manufacturer has to take something out of the product to hit this lower price point, then they have to take out more, to make sure that if the same thing happens this year, that happened last year, they have the margin in the product to write the check to cover the margin guarantee.

So, you ask are we crazy for relaunching now, I would say absolutely not. We have focused all of our energy into making the BEST products, yet achieve Retail Price points that are attainable.

What do you think, do consumers get inspired by the mass quantities, or do they get inspired by GREAT PRODUCT. We are voting on the product.

What do you think?