Concepts Killed At The Cash Register

March 13, 2009 By David Burn Leave a Comment

I like working on retail accounts. It’s a straight up game where you always know the score. You do “X” and bing, it works. Or the other, you do “Y” and it bombs.

Retail is also a bellwether. If the economy is suffering, retail suffers. If it’s booming, people are in stores buying product. According to The Wall Street Journal, the sectors falling fortunes have forced several retailers to curtail their experimental stores.

As recently as last year, retail “concept” stores were all the rage in the teen apparel business. These shops, offering the feel and prices of boutiques, took aim at tiny slices of the youth market.
Now, many of these teen concepts are being pared as the recession prompts a harsh reappraisal of slicing the market into dozens of niches.

Hot Topic Inc., who stuck to their rock-themed concept has proven an exception to the bad news, reporting a same-store sales increase of 5.2% last quarter.

Filed Under: Retail

About David Burn

I wrote my first ad for a local political candidate when I was 17. She went on to win her race, and I felt the power of persuasive copy for the first time. Starting in Portland in 1995, I worked my way across the country as a copywriter and eventually became a content director making media products for big packaged goods brands. I returned to Oregon in 2008, and now I focus on building brands for companies that matter, including this one.