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dem having to revise dem figgas fi October as they have failed to show growth an it is in part due to the failure of dem clothing line ...cheap chic is how i read it being referred to elsewhere....fi me, polyester will neva be chic...hot yes, but neva chic
Wal-Mart aims to give apparel customers better fit
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., facing an apparel-identity crisis, is turning to its fledgling New York trend office to help it better understand customer clothing needs as it struggles to strike a balance between basic T-shirts and khakis and a trendier mode of dressing.
After less than two years, Wal-Mart is transforming the New York office into a full-blown design center that will dictate styles, color and fabrics for Wal-Mart's roughly 3,100 U.S. stores.
It's a heady move for a retailer with rural roots and a no-nonsense approach to selling merchandise at cut-rate levels. But it's a necessary one if Wal-Mart is to beef up sales at established stores by attracting a hipper breed of shopper. The retailer appears to have failed in its first crack at bringing glam to the masses.
In September, Wal-Mart hired Hope Brick, a former May Co. executive, as vice president of apparel design to lead the team that works with designers, suppliers and buyers. She reports to Doug Howe, who is the senior vice president of product development.
Brick's hiring marked Wal-Mart's move from outside consultants to on-staff experts who will set design direction for the retailer. In all, Wal-Mart expects to have six people in its New York office.
The step prompted at least one analyst, Merrill Lynch's Virginia Genereux, to speculate that more changes were ahead.
"Some senior management change in apparel, currently run by Claire Watts, seems increasingly likely," she said in a research note.
Watts is senior vice president of merchandising apparel and home goods and was key to setting up the New York trend office, said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Linda Blakley.
She did not comment on Watts' tenure but said Brick's hiring is a "sign of our commitment to the trend and design office and to have people there who could live and work from New York."
Meanwhile, the world's largest retailer also is taking a closer look at how it distinguishes products by store to reflect the consumer needs and wants of the neighborhoods in which they sit, a strategy is calls "customer segmentation."
That's been a critical issue for Wal-Mart in recent years, but the retailer has put the differentiation focus on food and consumable items rather than apparel. Stores in heavy Hispanic areas, for example, will carry a much broader array of, say, tortillas and hot sauces, than those in Polish or Irish neighborhoods.
But Chief Executive Lee Scott told analysts last week that his company may have overdone it a bit with the fashion quotient. "We over expanded," he said.
A year ago, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. trotted out the smart and stylish former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres as the face of Metro 7 in a wide-ranging - and expensive - marketing program unlike any it had done before.
Posing in trendy skirts, blouses and skinny-leg jeans in Vogue and other fashion magazines, Torres garnered immediate attention as customers snapped up the clothing and accessories at about 600 stores.
In fact, the buying was so frenzied that Wal-Mart boasted last April at a media conference that it couldn't stock the clothing fast enough.
But that wasn't the case when Wal-Mart expanded Metro 7 to another 700 stores, partly leading to this week's dismal prediction that October's same-store sales results will just rise a meager 0.5%. See full story.
Scott lamented last week that he and his team haven't figured out yet why the stylish clothing was flying out the doors at some stores and laying flat at others.
His early prognosis is that Wal-Mart was just too quick on the draw despite what executives thought was "a pretty good idea" of what consumers wanted.
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