With the recession hanging on like a pall, many of the nation's big retail outlets are beginning to resemble mausoleums. Merchandise sales are dismally flat this year. Still, not every store is an echo chamber. A few novel retailing ideas have captured the attention of otherwise moribund buyers. The success of some may signal that shopping preferences and rituals are changing, while others may be nothing more than passing fads. As the great philosopher Confucius -- yes, Confucius! -- once said, "To open a shop is easy; to keep it open is an art." Here are three works of modern retailing art that are bucking the trend:
THE WET SEAL Americans bore easily, and few know this better than Ken Chilvers, president of the Wet Seal. This hip California-based chain of 97 clothing stores has branched into sun-filled states such as Hawaii, Arizona and Florida. Revenues, $107 million last year, have climbed 972% since 1985, when the 17-store Seal was awash in debt. Last year it went public with a $37 million stock offering.
The Seal's secret: trendy merchandise is constantly turned over, while employees are handed weekly bonuses to help push it out the door. The chain's concept is "multigenerational," which in plain Valleyspeak means that gum- snapping, Walkman-toting ingenues and their miniskirted moms can sport the same fashions, from flowered denim shorts to psychedelic bikinis. "We don't just ask our customers what they want," points out Chilvers. "We spend a tremendous amount of time in the malls, in our competitors' stores. I hang around and watch what they buy, what they don't buy."
Wet Seal stores are large and dramatic (3,900 sq. ft. on average), and the merchandise is displayed all the way up to the ceiling on high-tech impressionistic wire mannequins bathed in track lighting. Tops, pants, shorts and jackets are often clustered in the same spot for customers who can't match clothes on their own. Many stores also boast a 25-screen video wall from which computer-controlled rock videos play perpetually. By using computers, boasts marketing director Lesly Martin, "our buyers were actually able to track the day neon beachwear died." Radical!
THE NATURE CO. This is the neo-naturalist's answer to wet seals. No rock videos here, though. Enter these stores and you're more likely to hear the babbling of a brook or the haunting song of a whale, sniff the fragrance of freshly brewed chamomile tea or gaze through dappled lighting meant to resemble sunlight in a forest. "People come in and say, 'Ahhh!'," says Anita Treash, the company's marketing director.
The Nature Co. is a prime example of "greentailing," or riding the wave of the environmental movement. The eco-chain started life in 1973 as one small shop near the University of California, Berkeley, campus run by a pair of Peace Corps veterans. Today the Nature Co., owned by the CML Group of Acton, Mass., has 54 stores and is moving into Europe and Japan. Sales this year are expected to hit $90 million, up 29% from 1990.