This is the New Jersey that David Letterman cannot work into a quip. If one drives east from the Delaware River on an apple-crisp autumn afternoon, a landscape of cornfields, horse farms and wooded hills unrolls from the horizon. There is not a chemical factory or oil refinery in sight. Oh, oh, wait a minute. On the outskirts of Flemington, a picturesque village of Victorian homes and red-brick buildings, a sign proclaims, FACTORY LUGGAGE OUTLET -- BRAND NAMES AT BIG SAVINGS! Something decidedly unbucolic is going on out here.
The impression is confirmed a few moments later in the snarled traffic on Flemington's tree-shaded Main Street. People stream along the sidewalks and across the street carrying plastic bags emblazoned with pricey logos: ADIDAS, CALVIN KLEIN, VILLEROY & BOCH. Just who, a gridlocked visitor wonders, would come to rural Flemington, N.J., to buy such chic cityside items as Waterford crystal or Joan & David shoes? The answer: a growing legion of well-heeled devotees of factory-outlet shopping.
Forget the downtown department store and the suburban shopping mall. Leave the catalogs on the coffee table and turn off the video-shopping channel. Hop into the car with a full bandolier of credit cards and head for the outback. Tucked away in Monterey, Calif.; Boaz, Ala.; Rockford, Mich.; Freeport, Me.; and a dozen odd small towns in between, scores of manufacturers' outlet stores are doing a land-office business by offering 25% to 70% savings. Along with the bargains, urban consumers enjoy a day in the country and engage in a venerable American dream -- the inalienable right to pursue the deep discount. Says Charles Bloom, a Flemington-based developer who has put together six profitable factory-to-you outlet villages in the U.S.: "This is the wave of the retail future."
For little Flemington (pop. 4,000), once a center of iron foundries, the wave is of tidal proportions. The town's history as a bargain haven goes back to the turn of the century. Its success, though, really took off in 1921, when the Flemington Fur Co. opened its doors to sell the fur coats it made there.The outlet became an East Coast shopping mecca. These days it sells a $10,500 mink coat for a mere $7,895. Furs were not enough to save Flemington. In the mid-1970s, when the town was losing business to shopping malls, and its retail space could be rented cheaply, the Dansk kitchenware firm opened a factory outlet, hoping to capitalize on the fur company's cachet. By 1982, Bloom, 63, a New Jersey accountant who had wandered into real estate, had transformed a cluster of artisans' shops in Flemington into an 88-store outlet complex called Liberty Village. Much of the success, he says, is that "in outlets, you know you're getting the real brand-name merchandise."
Today some 35,000 shoppers a week descend on about 125 outlets in town to get the real stuff. Young couples from Manhattan take an hour's drive on Saturdays to stock up on Fieldcrest sheets; Philadelphia Main Liners trek some 40 miles for Harve Benard outfits. Suburban moms motor in for the kids' Nike running shoes, and senior citizens on bus tours from as far away as central Pennsylvania buy Carter's clothing for grandchildren. Even given the discounts, Flemington merchants grossed about $100 million last year, and they expect to do better this year.