Maryland Business

When you think of Baltimore, you don’t necessarily think “fashion destination” along the lines of New York, Paris, Milan, etc.

But apparently someone wants to try to change that. On Sept. 8, a “Fashion’s Night Out” celebration of sorts will be held in Baltimore, along with 100 other cities in 17 countries participating in the same extravaganza.

The event celebrates the industry with a combination of shopping, entertainment, special events, extended business hours and other types of festivities around a city.

The concept was developed by Anna Wintour of Vogue Magazine fame in 2008, to boost the industry and support retailers. Baltimore’s event is sponsored by the Baltimore Fashion Alliance, a nonprofit created earlier this year.

Retailers and boutiques in Mt. Vernon, Hampden, Clipper Mill, Kenilworth, Greenspring Station, Harbor East and other areas will be extending business hours into the evening and planning in-store events.

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Bethesda-based Discovery Channel’s Mike Rowe is a man after my own heart. Here’s why:

“Frankly, I’ve never understood the whole notion of jamming yourself into a dressing room with an armful of new styles to find the ‘perfect look,’” said Rowe. “And from what I’ve seen, I’m not alone. The guys I know aren’t going to spend a hundred dollars on a pair of pants with rhinestones and fake stains and zippers to nowhere. And don’t even get me started on jeans with rips and holes already in them. Madness.”

Actually, he’s a man after my archaeologist husband’s heart … I think I’ve literally heard him say the same thing.

Rowe’s quote is from a news release I received today titled “Saving Men From $250 Embellished Jeans.” It’s announcing Lee Jeans’ new advertising campaign featuring the star of Dirty Jobs, a show in which durable jeans are a must-have. Rowe’s idea of the perfect pair of jeans is simple:

“They should last. They should fit. They should fade. They should never cost more than fifty bucks. And they should be blue.”

Rowe is your typical “man’s man” (although I can think of some women, myself included, who also subscribe to the simple shopping school of thought.) Rowe is no frills, straightforward and he abides by the policy that clothes should be durable and worn literally into the ground before they are chucked.

The tactic Lee Jeans is taking is unusual but it’s a smart diversion from other clothing companies that urge you to fill up your closets each season with the latest styles for fear of mass ridicule. The partnership and new ad campaign will include Rowe sharing his perspective on jeans shopping and will feature him in Lee’s new Premium Select, which retail for $42 at Lee.com, Kohl’s, JCPenney and Sears. Ads debut in print, broadcast and online today.

And just to stick it to the fashionistas, Rowe and Lee will be launching a new website, shopphobia.com, where Rowe says “enough is enough – he has Shop Phobia and isn’t going to take it anymore,” the release says.

As much as I love this idea, the business reporter in me is wondering — if Lee Jeans are as durable as they say, how do you get people to come back each season and buy more? Even if you’re appealing to people who have dirty jobs, my husband’s field jeans last him more than one season before he’s forced to buy another pair. Where’s the impetus to keep your customers coming back on a regular basis?

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You know those white security tags stores attached to clothing to prevent theft? I met the guy that invented those in Las Vegas this weekend at the International Council of Shopping Centers’ RECon conference.

Larry K. Canipe, of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Cleva Technologies, said he tried retiring a few years ago after 25 years in the business – but it didn’t stick. Now he’s got a new product that he says is an easy way for retailers and other businesses to poll their customers while getting a much better return than traditional survey methods.

Xit (pronnounced “exit”) Poll was launched in 2009 and is a roughly five-pound stand that costs between $3 and $6 a day to run, depending on the quantity the business leases from Cleva Technologies. It takes about 30 seconds to assemble (I did it myself) and clients can upload via a Web server short surveys for their customers to take. Cleva Technologies charges for rental of the Xit Poll and processing of the data.

About 25 Xit Polls are stationed all over the Las Vegas Convention Center at this year’s RECon to gain feedback on the event’s effectiveness. Canipe said roughly 5 percent of passers by stop to take a survey on Xit Poll, compared with about .001 percent using other survey methods like phone calls or using the bottom of receipts to invite customers to fill out a survey for a chance to win a prize.

For mall owners looking to fill an anchor tenant space (like the Owings Mills Mall in 2008, when Boscov’s department store bowed out), the polling system can be used to ask customers what kind of retailer they’d like to see in the space. Canipe said New England-based Finard Properties recently did just that with one of its retail centers.

“That’s such an important space that it’s so key to find the right tenant for your customers,” Canipe said. “They got an overwhelming response.”

Other uses include getting public feedback after city council meetings or getting customer feedback in the restaurant and hospitality industry, colleges and universities and even financial institutions (Bank of America is a client).

Cleva Technologies also announced at RECon it is launching a new version of Xit Poll that prints out a coupon for survey takers as an added incentive to stop and answer the poll questions.

“So often the only feedback [customers take the time to tell businesses] is negative,” said Canipe. “This sort of levels that playing field.”

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It’s that time of year again — when the shopping for others is completed and now it’s time to shop for yourself and spend all those gift certificates you got for the holidays.

According to the National Retail Federation, more than 5 percent of consumers will buy a holiday gift after Dec. 25 and more than 60 percent of Americans will be out shopping for themselves.

The general talk among retail industry watchers is that the discounts won’t be as steep as last year when stores were just dying to get rid of their excess inventory after a dismal holiday shopping season. In 2009, retailers were able to plan ahead for lower demand and weren’t left holding the bag.

But there are still plenty of bargains out there. Word on the street so far from Retail Eye Partners, a New York-based retail consulting company, is that promotions are continuing to drive traffic.

“We found malls to be busier than off-mall stores like Best Buy, Kohl’s, Target, Wal-Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond, etc. as shoppers finally turned their attention to specialty and apparel stores after weeks of looking for bargains and gifts at the off-mall stores,” the company said in a press release.

Macy’s is currently offering 15 percent off all online purchases, JCPenny has a code for 30-70% percent off their items with 99-cent shipping and numerous retailers have slashed their clearance and sales items to even lower prices.

Click on this link from shopping-bargains.com for some of the best sales and clearances going on out there from now through the first week of January.

Happy bargain-hunting!

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How desperate are high-end retailers? They’re so hungry for customers this holiday season, they’re willing to literally give away thousands of dollars to shoppers who buy something from their Web site.

The promotion is called “Mystery Money” — those who are on stores’ e-mail lists are sent a gift card number, but the dollar amount isn’t revealed until online checkout. The gift cards range from $20 to $1,000, and stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdales are sending e-mails to their customers encouraging them to shop online to see what their gift card amount is.

After a couple tries this morning with TDR’s Danielle Ulman, we figured the gift card amounts are based on what you spend — if you pop a $140 make-up cream in your online shopping cart, you’ll get $20 off at checkout. If you spring for a $500 pair of shoes, you’ll get $50 off. In other words, it’s just like a percentage discount coupon…only it sounds nicer.

Bloomingdales is actually a little less mysterious than Saks — their e-mail promotion (which is for Wednesday only) gives you the option to enter your gift card number and see what the amount is before you start shopping. We tried that too…and came up with $20. Good luck finding anything at Bloomingdales remotely close to that amount!

All in all, the promotions reek of desperation. And why not? Macy’s which owns Bloomongdales, lost $35 million last quarter. And aside from the second quarter this year (from May through July), its net income line has been in the red for more than a year.

Saks hasn’t done much better. Saks Inc. made $6.3 million last quarter but that was the first gross profit the company had made in more than a year. It lost more than $59.3 million during the second quarter this year. The company also announced Wednesday it is cutting 116 jobs at its flagship store in New York.

Meanwhile, how is competitor Nordstom doing? Thanks to a boost in online sales and sales at its off-price alter ego, Nordstrom Rack, the company posted a 2.2 increase in year-over-year sales in November and its net income has ranged from $68 million to $105 million over the last year.

Seems like the public has spoken — a $2,000 handbag just isn’t cutting it anymore.

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It’s kind of funny that sometimes the fancier the product, the more old school effective marketing can be.

Case in point: according to a Retail Advertising and Marketing Association survey conducted by BIGresearch, 43.7 percent of shoppers say word-of-mouth is the biggest influence in their electronics purchases.

“Hearing what other people have to say about a product gives shoppers the satisfaction of knowing what they purchased is peer-reviewed and worth their money,” said Mike Gatti, executive director of RAMA. “Whether it is based on a conversation with a friend or a customer review on a website, people put a lot of weight in other shoppers’ opinions.”

Fear not, retailers — advertising inserts, articles and in-store promotions also sway buying decisions. It’s just that for you, those methods cost money and they won’t be as effective as a free endorsement from a real live human being.

When I think about my shopping — which is mostly online — I love it when an unfamiliar product has a couple reviews for me to peruse. Another case in point: I was searching for a winter coat from Overstock.com last year and found one by Coffee Shop for a steal at $80 (including shipping). I read the customer reviews before I bought it and all of them raved so I figured I was safe.

Last winter I lost track of how many times people asked me where I got the coat and I know of at least one friend that went online and bought a similar coat from Overstock.com. And by the way, 33.6 percent of shoppers according to BIGresearch said their apparel decisions are also influenced by word-of-mouth.

Seems the more shopping we do on the Internet the more important good reviews become. In fact a large part of marketing firms’ “word-of-mouth” campaigns involve recruiting real customers to write good reviews for their clients online. They are not paid to endorse the products — but it’s a fine line.

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While clothes and books were the big attractions for in-store shoppers on Black Friday weekend, Cyber Monday — so far — is all about consumer electronics.

I spoke to Graham Jones, vice president, merchant accounts for PriceGrabber.com, midway through the day, and he said online shoppers were already creating a clear trend. GPS devices and Nintendo Wii-related items were overwhelmingly taking up the top slots in sales halfway through the day (on the East Coast).

“The big story in previous years was HD-TVs and plasmas,” said Jones. “They were at the top last year, and now they’re not even in the top 20 this year….People still want to buy electronics, but they don’t want spend as much [as prior years].”

Jones also said more people are buying practical gifts this year, and PriceGrabber is seeing an increase in traffic for home improvement and auto service purchases. PriceGrabber is an online comparison shopping site that tracks its traffic by its referrals to merchants.

“So you have people wanting to gift but to [help the recipient] save money also,” he said.

The online spending typically begins around 9 a.m. Eastern and continues until about 8 p.m. EST/5 p.m. PST, corresponding with the workday. Peaks are typically around lunch hours (between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST) and towards the end of the workday (between 4 and 6 p.m. EST), according to PriceGrabber’s statistics.

So fess up…who here’s been shopping at work? And what did you get?
Top products for Cyber Monday as of noon EST
1. Wii Console
2. Apple 8GB iPod touch – Black
3. nuvi 255W Wide-Screen Automotive GPS
4. iPod touch 16GB MP3 Player (Internal Flash Drive, 22 Hours)
5. Wii Fit
6. nuvi 265WT GPS
7. Office 2007 Home and Student (Full Product, PC)
8. Digital Rebel XSI 12MP Black Digital SLR Camera w/ EF-S 18-55mm Kit
9. nuvi 765T GPS
10. D90 SLR Digital Camera Kit
11. Xbox 360 Premium System
12. Apple 8GB iPod nano Blue
13. nuvi 205W GPS
14. Apple 32GB iPod touch – Black
15. Nintendo DS Limited Edition Pokemon Pack

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Individual spending during Black Friday weekend (the Friday, Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving) was down 8 percent this year to $343.31, or about $29 less than last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

And that’s even though the number of shoppers increased for the three-day kick-start to the holiday shopping season — 195 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 172 million last year.

Shoppers appear to be diversifying their limited spending as purchases in most categories went up or stayed the same over last year. Toys, sporting goods, health/beauty items and gift cards were up over last year. The most popular purchases were clothing (50.9 percent), consumer electronics (36.9 percent) and books (40.3 percent), which remained nearly unchanged over last year.

The only categories to see a decline in purchases were home decor and “miscellaneous/other.” To see the full survey results, click here.

Here’s what NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin had to say: “While retailers are encouraged by the number of Americans who shopped over Black Friday weekend, they know they have their work cut out for them to keep people coming back through Christmas. Shoppers can continue to expect retailers to focus on low prices and bargains through the end of December.”

While Black Friday has typically NOT been the biggest sales day of the year (that has usually come during the first two weeks of December), the Friday after Thanksgiving in 2008 did end up being the top day of that year for retailers.

Considering how the rest of the season went (a total spending decline of about 3 percent), it seems retailers have every reason to be worried about what this year’s Black Friday weekend means for the rest of their season. And they had better be hoping that this year’s Black Friday isn’t yet again the biggest shopping day of the year.

Maybe some retailers can make up the difference with online sales. But that’s looking shaky too — 28 percent of shoppers during Black Friday weekend bought something online, according to the NRF. That’s down from 34 percent last year.

Stay tuned for another blog today on a Cyber Monday sales update from PriceGrabber.com’s president, Laura Conrad.

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In no particular order some of my parking lot/garage pet peeves are:

1) Patiently waiting for a space only to have someone steal it from you.

2) Being stuck behind a car in a garage that YOU know will only have free spaces on the top floors…yet the person in front of you is delusional and inches along looking for that mythical free space on floors one through six.

3) Someone has pulled into their parking space with no regard for humanity and is hanging over into the space next to it, essentially taking two precious spaces while the rest of us are desperately driving around and hoping we’ll find a place to park before sundown.

So, yes — there are some holiday shopping stresses to be endured before we even set foot in the mall. AAA Mid-Atlantic has sent out a news release reminding us all to be nice to each other in the Land of No Civilization (otherwise known as the parking lot).

“Do not let trivial parking lot wars dim your holiday glow,” the release says. “Avoid petty confrontations that can result in additional holiday expenses, including fender-benders, personal injuries and a general Grinch-like attitude.”

Here are some of AAA’s tips:
1) Head for the side door. Many shoppers want to park near their favorite stores or near the mall entrance. Most malls have secondary entrances on the sides and those entrances usually have less traffic and additional convenient spaces.
2) Play the outfield. Outlying areas normally have more open spaces, lighter traffic and a lower risk of collision. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to walk off the holiday treats. In some cases, however, those spaces may not be as secure so be aware of the risks.
3) Wait until Cyber Monday. Many retailers, in fact 87 percent will have special online promotions on Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, according to an eHoliday survey for Shop.org.

For all the suggestions, click here.

Anyone putting on their game face for Black Friday? Have any parking lot horror stories or pet peeves you’d like to share?

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With Cyber Monday coming up in less than two weeks, my inbox has started filling up with retail predictions, trends, spending forecasts — the works. But one release veered left where everyone else was going right: when “The Myth of Cyber Monday” popped up in my messages list I was immediately intrigued.

Compiled by Northern California-based Permuto Discoveries, the graphic (available here) outlines statistical reasons why Cyber Monday, billed as the busiest online shopping day of the year, is not and never has been the top dog of online shopping days.

The term Cyber Monday was originally coined in 2005 by Shop.org after a significant number of  retailers reported a sizable increase in online sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. Since then, sales have grown from $486 million on Cyber Monday in 2005 to $846 million last year.

But neither one of those days was the busiest online shopping day of the year, according to Permuto.

$556 million in online sales took place on Dec. 12, 2005 and $887 million in sales on Dec. 9 last year made those days the busiest online shopping days of their years.

But further on, the graphic notes Cyber Monday’s sales totals are getting closer to the top online day of the year. That could mean that consumers and retailers are buying (no pun intended) the hype anyway and creating a self fulfilling prophecy.

Last year, Cyber Monday was only about $41 million off from the true busiest online day of the year. Could this year be the year it actually lives up to its name?

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