STORES Magazine - June 2008 - (Page T9)

TA K I N G O N teens to-date looks: for spring, the Dress Out Loud promotions encouraged shoppers to embrace bold colors. Marshalls can sew up a deal with its shoe department, particularly in stores with the MegaShoe assortment. And Ross dangles super-low prices to lure them in. Off-price retailers hold a trump card that the specialty chains and mass merchants can’t beat – namely, designer brands at affordable prices. If gas prices continue to drain Most-shopped budgets, off-price retailers off-price retailers could find youthful faces pourT.J. Maxx 18% ing over their racks and Marshalls 16 rounders. Missing from the short list Ross 15 is Plato’s Closet, a franchise Source: TRU operating nationwide that is emerging as a trendy penny-pincher’s paradise. Plato’s Closet is a unique recycling retail store specializing in clothes for teens and twenty-somethings. Franchise owners buy and sell the latest looks in gently used clothing and accessories from the hottest brand names including Express, Hollister and American Eagle. ed, fashion-right Old Navy Most-shopped chain chain that resonates with students? It’s probably the clothing retailers fact that it delivers on that Old Navy 35% promise. Teens want the American Eagle 29 latest looks, but unless 23 their parents are footing the Aéropostale bill for everything – and Source: TRU money is no object – Old Navy appears to be a very viable option. American Eagle and Aéropostale round out the top three. Both offer a more moderate-priced assortment than Abercrombie & Fitch, another teen favorite. Conspicuously absent from this group is Hollister, a division of A&F that typically wins over teens with its own priced-right mix. Still, with only 455 units, Hollister is dwarfed in size by American Eagle and Aéropostale, which each have more than 800 stores. FAVORITE BRANDS arents often quip that teens have multiple personalities: apparently, it’s not all hyperbole. When you look at this top 10 list, teens seem polarized between well-known brands that span generational boundaries and brand names that have carved a niche with the so-called millennials. For the first time in several years, there’s a new brand in the top spot – Apple. The ubiquitous brand overtook No. 2, Nike, which was the top brand among teens for several years. With teens toting Apple iPods everywhere they go, downloading music from iTunes, talking on their iPhones and using Apple notebook computers – is it any wonder? It is important to note that neither Apple nor Nike are Favorite brands exclusively marketed to teens 1. Apple – nor are Coca-Cola and Sony, which rank fourth and fifth 2. Nike respectively, nor No. 10, 3. American Eagle Pepsi. The lesson here is sim4. Coca-Cola ple: investing in brands still matters. 5. Sony American Eagle is the most6. Hollister preferred “teen” brand among 7. Aéropostale the 12- to 19-year-old demographic. The fact that they 8. Abercrombie & Fitch think of it first and foremost is 9. Nintendo a testimony to AEO’s multi10. Pepsi channel, multimedia approach Source: TRU to connecting with teens. STORES / JUNE 2008 T9 P ATHLETIC SPECIALTY RETAILERS T he gender factor would appear to loom large in the selection of “mostshopped” athletic specialty retailers. Young men, often more caught up in having the Most-shopped athletic right athletic shoe than the specialty retailers right apparel, shopped Foot Locker 22% Foot Locker most often in Dick’s 15 the past 12 months. More than half of the Finish Line 12 merchandise at Foot Lock- Source: TRU er is athletic footwear. At Dick’s Sporting Goods, the mix is considerably broader, including a full line of sporting goods and equipment, apparel and footwear. But with approximately 3,800 units (operating under various flags, including Lady Foot Locker and Champs Sports) in malls from coast to coast, Foot Locker has more opportunities to lure them in at the mall. Nike is among the top three brands cited by teens, a statistic that suggests greater potential for athletic specialty retailers to attract these young footwear enthusiasts. CHAIN CLOTHING O ld Navy is not a teen retailer: it sells apparel for the entire family. So what is it about Gap’s value-orient- WWW.STORES.ORG http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - June 2008

STORES Magazine - June 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Tesco Tests Carbon Labels What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Cover Story: Boom - or Bust Green Retailing Concept2Watch Online Marketing Building Traffic Water Management Branding Digital Marketing Loyalty Programs Special Report: Taking on Teens Supply Chain - Robo Crop Human Resources Supply Chain - Directory Assistance Loeb Retail Letter Arts Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - June 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.