The McDonaldization of Superb Stores

in #art6 years ago

Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

The store originated in Sparks, Nevada, in 1986. For those of us who live in Denver, the warehouse, which was housed in a huge facility in Cheyenne, Wyoming, presented a decadent day’s drive and time to spend perusing all kinds of outdoor gear and clothing at our leisure. It was full of deals, uber deals and simply ridiculous uber deals their markdown section. While the company wandered into casual clothing and home goods, its core offerings ranged from wet suits to camouflage hunting gear to a wide range of tents and boots. It was a gear pig’s paradise and I was a devotee.

Sierra Trading Post was a mecca for those of us who loved a good deal. On top of that, there was a return policy of….well, kind of forever. If you weren’t satisfied, bring it back. Only rarely did I do such a thing. Most of what I bought there was of such good quality that I had no intention of returning anything.

Back in 2000, I bought a double 7mm wetsuit which took me into the frigid, 40-degree waters of South Africa to dive the storied Sardine Run. Over the course of years, the trip to Cheyenne remained one of those lovely all-day excursions which offered not only a drive through gorgeous Rockies countryside but also the chance to come home with brag-worthy scores. People were well-trained, the staff dedicated, and the quality assured.


Glassdoor

The Way of the Retail World

Unfortunately, many good things come to an end. Sierra Trading Post sold out to the TJMaxx group of stores in 2012 for a purported $200 million. Gone was the generous return policy. Suddenly, STPs started popping up everywhere.

On one hand, it made the gear more accessible. On the other, things began to change and not always for the better.

Here in Denver there are several STPs. The original is about five doors down from a huge Home Goods Store, which is now part of the same family. The first opened its doors on August 28th, 2014. Originally when I began shopping they held true to the original theme: outdoor gear with just a few other lines. The catalog remained the same, with lots and lots of coupons and offers. At first blush it seemed like a great idea, because it made the same great deals and merchandise available to a wider public. While many of us missed the excuse for a leisurely drive north into the ranchlands of Wyoming, here we could make a shorter drive and find much the same thing.


STP Headquarters Cheyenne

Corporate Brand Killers

Last fall, to give you an idea of what always drew me to the store, I approached the front entrance and was distracted by a handmade wooden canoe on display. It was stunning. At half price it was still $2500, and I had to pull the reins in to keep from buying it. I’m a kayaker; I most assuredly don’t need a heavy wooden canoe. But it was breathtakingly gorgeous. That is the kind of find that made me a long-time, loyal customer. It was a piece of art that very nearly ended up in the back of my Honda. Interestingly when you shop a certain art gallery in Coeur d’Alene Idaho (another small town known for its cool boutiques) one of the pieces mounted on a wall is a nearly identical canoe. They are just that lovely. For those of us who appreciate exquisitely handmade items, this was sculpture of the highest order.

Unfortunately the buyers at the TJX headquarters simply couldn’t leave good enough alone. Over time, stupid shit(in my opinion) began to show up in “my” gear store. Kiddie clothing, unmistakable TJX home supplies. No matter that such things were available five doors down in the same shopping center. When a brand new STP opened up in the far north end of town, I made the trip to see what was available. Natch, a TJ Maxx was a few doors down and many available offerings were indistinguishable from store to store. While STP still had a lot of gear, the increasing shelves of foods, home supplies, baby items and non-gear-related crap had infiltrated our beloved mecca like a virulent virus.

STP was no longer its own brand. Parts of the store look like a dumping ground for whatever mindless buyer said, “Oh, go stick it into STP.” Such is the way of individual, quality stores that get bought by big corporations. It had become a lower-quality TJ Maxx. Or, put another way, another WalMart, where you can get anything and everything, not necessarily very good, but hey, it’s all here. I liken that to going to a smorgasbord where the food is lousy, but hey, it’s all you can eat!


by Mac Glassford on Unsplash

A Loss of Character

For those of us old enough to have grown up in small towns long before supermalls and the WalMart-ization of the American retail experience, shopping was all about perusing the unique small stores that reflected their owners’ sensibilities and personalities. In my tiny town of Winter Haven, Florida, we had a delightful gift shop called The Bee Hive which was dotted with the most charming figurines and fascinations. It’s long gone, one of many casualties as the WalMarts and KMarts, Macy’s and other big box stores wiped out local color.

In some towns, like Spokane, where I lived for some three years, there used to be charming clothing boutiques which offered lively options. When the River Park Square Mall moved in, so did all the chain stores. Out went the unique boutiques. Mass-produced clothing and products conspire to make all our closets and houses look like bland Bed Bath and Beyond, with no interest or character.

Wondrous Stores Still Exist

Spokane, like many cities, has a magical holdout: Wonders of the World (http://wondersoftheworldinc.com)/, which has been an institution for years. The store has been a landmark for decades, and provides the shopper with that rare experience: so much variety from so many parts of the world. Every time you walk in, there is something new. They have huge skeletons of a T-Rex (named Sheldon), a bear and other fossils, and everything from dragons and faeries and Ivory Coast masks to the most gorgeous gems and jewelry. One of my last forays there I bought a pair of antique bronze Chinese horses that Pamela, the long-time owner, had scooped up at an estate sale. If you happen to be hungry to peruse the kind of mind-boggling collection- at what I think are remarkably reasonable prices- that might inspire you to leap on airplane, then visit their site. I can’t venture there without walking out loaded to the gills.


From my living room: the two Chinese horses, a Peruvian weaving, an Asian horse and an a genuine Japanese wedding gown. To the left, a Yaruba beaded belt from Africa. The dresser is an antique Asian piece from Indochine, another wondrous store in Boulder, CO.

The beauty of the place is that it reflects Pam’s personality and her eclectic tastes. And that is precisely my point. It is the individuality and uniqueness of the owners that make up such charming shops, and which make them such a pleasure to wander.

Now granted, the pleasure of walking stores dates me. My high school friend Patti feels strongly about being able to touch, feel, see and try on before she buys, but we are Baby Boomers. Neither of us is a fan of shipping expenses. Even those stores which pay them for you rob you of the visual and tactile joy, as well as the exquisite creativity of people who dress windows. Those of my vintage still enjoy the pleasure of seeing, touching, trying on and exploring products which offer a range of sensual pleasures.

Ask any New Yorker about the wonder of Christmas season, and what it’s like to walk around the Upper East Side stores with their eye-popping displays. No city on earth does Christmas better than Manhattan. Now that is art, and it’s also great retail. If you’re a New Yorker or a seasonal visitor, you wander the best displays as mapped out each year- simply because they are so creative and inviting. That’s magical. And to me, that’s what retails should be: eye-pleasing, inventive, inviting. You want us to buy? Provide enticement.


Saks Fifth Avenue window display for Christmas

Not far from me in Boulder, an Asian-themed store called Indochine (https://indochinehomeimport.com/) offers antiques from ancient Buddhas to temple dogs. They also don’t come cheaply if you want different, which is part of the problem. In order to survive the onslaught of massive retailers, these boutiques sometimes have to charge a premium due to the cost of rising rent, and the fact that so many of us swim in the mainstream of achingly average. However, unless you travel the world like I do and bring home your own unique treasures, stores like Indochine go along way towards making your environment glow with character.

When I lived in uptown Manhattan in the 1970s, just walking home a different route to East 58th Street offered a hundred hundred opportunities to enjoy a rich mixture of cultural variety, immense creativity and a visual smorgasbord. That is part of America’s great charm: our individuality, our unique styles and tastes. Having spent time in the Army where we all really do look alike when in formation, believe me, when I was on my own time, I wanted to look creative.

What We’ve Lost

Too many stores like Wonders and Indochine all over America are closing, dying out or being bought up by larger concerns whose buyers have all the creative intelligence of a Tide Pod. It appears that corporations assumed that we as a general society like predictable, safe and similar. This homogenization of the American taste shows up in our clothing as well. As boutique owners retire, they sell out (and I don’t blame them) in order to enjoy a well-deserved retirement. The down side is that we lose the character and community that they added to our lives.


And As for Fashion…

Interestingly, fashion is one of the few areas where we really can experiment. For a number of years I wrote about fashion, and as a result know perhaps a wee bit more than the average person about the topic. However, I have leaned towards class and sobriety, which in many cases are fashion characteristics of the distant past. These days, finding attractive, complimentary and flattering fashion is a joke. Not only have designers descended into downright butt-ugly, they also cost a lot more for you to be different (as well as advertise your poor taste AND empty bank account to the world). Not unlike the grunge theme of the Eighties (which was also characterized by huge shoulder pads and extreme excess) this slap in the face to beauty feels like desperation just to be different. Yes- at the cost to any common sense or sense of beauty.

For a quick perusal of some of these remarkably insulting choices, see http://www.businessinsider.com/ugly-clothes-are-in-style-2018-2#moschino-cape-sheer-overlay-dress-895-8. If you really truly want to be entertained (As in, spend $400 for a pair of jeans that makes you look like you actually get your hands dirty, when you don’t).


Buzzfeed

For a long while I bought simply marvelous, uber cool and well-made clothing from the J. Peterman company, which among other things in its heydey bought the rights to reproduce clothing from megahits like Out of Africa and Titanic. I still have a perfect copy of Meryl Streep’s wedding outfit from Out of Africa, and it’s a work of art. Yes. THIS dress, minus the hat:


Biltmore

Yah. Wear something like this to an evening event. It’s a piece of silk sculpture- as fashion should be- and it’s graceful and gorgeous. And fun.

Along with impeccably-tailored Armani jackets that were the staple of my onstage professional speaking persona, Peterman’s sometimes quirky but always exquisite pieces added additional dash and daring to my wardrobe.I still own a flowing velvet gown that was modeled after a Russian princess ca. early 1900s. It is beyond gorgeous- and a showstopper.

Here’s a perfect example of Peterman in his prime:


This is the part of Peterman that is now defunct. I could just weep.

The Death Knell of American Designers: Corporate Greed

Unfortunately, Peterman went bankrupt when he expanded into brick and mortar too quickly (read: greed). And while Peterman bought his company back, and the long, slim catalogs are still characterized by the witty writing that made their pieces virtually irresistible, I haven’t bought from them in years. Their clothing is as blah, predictable and humdrum as anything you see on a rounder at Macy’s. The identical basics show up year after year. That’s NOT a compliment. The writing is still terrific, but the clothing is as boring as walking into today’s bloodless Banana Republic, a store that lost its soul as soon as The Gap took it over. The Gap sucked all the character out of what was once a very cool brand. Not any more. In fact, here’s how folks responded: The Gap has had to close some 200 stores.

That’s called feedback.

Two other American icons bit the dust: Tommy Hilfiger and of all people, Ralph Lauren (https://www.fastcompany.com/3062474/the-decline-of-premium-american-fashion-brands-what-happened-ralph-tommy). Both expanded rapidly into factory outlets, undermining their brand value and their cachet. They’re hardly alone. I am old enough to remember when Calvin Klein and Anne Klein were relatively high-end brands. Now you can get their stuff (and that’s all it is, poorly-made, mass-produced average stuff) virtually anywhere. When consumers who wanted to wear Ralph realized that everyone else could too, then why bother? What was once an empire is now just average. Vanilla. Many of these lines have their luxury offerings, but when corporate interests watered down the brand by making it available in vapid versions no different from anything you could buy at KMart, then even paying several thousand for one of those pieces felt like a blue light special. Americans love a bargain, so fake so-called “designer” factory outlets popped up all over American like acne. The offerings were all too often made for the factory stores that were intended to- and succeeded in- fooling the American buyer into believing they were getting a good product for less. No. You were still paying a premium for a crap item, whether it was a Nike shoe or a dish set.

In the last few years, back when I still bothered to stroll through my local Neiman Marcus stores, I noted that Armani’s once-magnificent offerings have taken on the mass-produced look and feel of anything you can buy at Target. If that’s the case, then please tell me why we should shell out a huge chunk of money for a once-respectable name sewn onto mediocre junk?

You Pay Dearly for Different

If you want something well made but also inventive, be prepared to part with a very pretty penny. My favorite clothing designers include Jacquemus, Monse and A.W.A.K.E. However, all I can do is look. A typical Monse blouse, which is just cotton mind you, can set you back easily $1200. Because we like our discounts, and virtually all of these very expensive pieces eventually end up on a “warehouse” site (to wit, Net-a-Porter items end up on The Outnet), the designers price them so far into the stratosphere that even at 90% off it’s too damned dear. Imagine a pair of thigh high boots that retail for $7900, and you can get them at 90% off. That’s still most of a grand. I can’t speak for anyone else but since I know those shoes wear and break just like my $39.00 TJ Maxx Vince Camutos, it ain’t worth it.

A Monse blouse can set you back more than your mortgage payment(one of my favorite Monse blouses is $2112, for COTTON thank you very much) . This is today’s cost for creativity:


Farfetch.com

Ultimately, like so many things, it’s just a few pieces of cotton thrown together in an interestingly way. Hey, if you’ve got those kinds of resources, have at it. Most of us don’t, not with our healthcare costs. I love edgy, quirky looks like the above. I just can’t shell out the equivalent of two mortgage payments to look interesting.


Thought Catalog

The Evolution/Devolution of the American Mall

The American Mall is now officially dead, with vast wastelands of empty real estate space that once held hundreds of stores that catered to a younger generation. Greed grew these empires, and poor strategic decision-making led to offering junk that we just didn’t want anymore. You can blame Amazon if you like but for my retail dollar, I think that the corporatization of American retail which drained the creative blood out of so many inventive brands had a lot more to do with it. We got bored, while at the same time we also tired tired of snarled parking lots, endless walking to look at the same old shit, and shopping as our primary source of entertainment. En masse we began to object- by staying home, buying online and various other ways of stating our unhappiness with what we were being fed.

Style Icons

We’re not with out inspiration. Hardly. If anything these days there are increasingly more examples of cool and creative. It’s just that the combination of cost as well as the wearability of interesting gear makes that hard.

Lady Gaga redefined creative, and she redefined a generation’s tastes. Unfortunately not many of us can wear (or afford, or walk in ) her creations, and they don’t go over well in corporate America, the very empire that flattened the creative peaks of the clothing stores they bought for their potential. Talk about killing the golden goose.

As for men’s fashion, while I can appreciate a little creativity, this is men’s designer creativity done just plain stupid:


Metro

Now look, I can see members of the LGBT community applauding this trend, about which I have no problem whatsoever. However I have some difficulty seeing the Crips facing off with the Bloods wearing this. The Bloods would die laughing. Game over.

While on one hand I understand the need to dress for your workplace, dress for your clients (read, largely conservative in many cases) that doesn’t mean an army of …

Same Same Same SAME

Driving to nearby towns and cities, other states used to be a fun adventure to see the kinds of personality-driven shops that might exist. We now live in a retail wasteland of the same old homogenized crap pretty much everywhere, whether it’s retail stores or entertainment. That homogenization stole creativity, joy, life and diversity from our towns, where it’s vastly easier to find a crappy Micky Ds than a diner that still knows how to make a mean grilled cheese. The good news is that in part due to our rich immigrant heritage, we can enjoy Ethiopian food, souvlaki, Indian curries or a thousand thousand dishes to tease the palate, even as our retail choices are dumbed down. However, this lack of similar variety in our retail choices- let me rephrase that- accessible, affordable retail choices- has led to the demise of the American mall, the loss of retail jobs (which hits women and minorities hardest) http://www.careerarc.com/blog/2017/06/retail-apocalypse-layoffs-2017-facts-stats/.

In the 2002 Tom Cruise thriller Minority Report, the action is set in 2054, and features a scene inside a huge mall that typified the 1980s. Hollywood simply assumed that the mall would continue to be a staple of American life forever, from mall-walking seniors to mall-crawling kids with fanny packs and LED- lit sneakers.

Not so.

In the 1990s, America had 1500 malls. Today we’re down to 1000, in part due to the wholesale departure (and demise)- of department stores. In a few decades the quintessential American mall will be a relic. They are now being repurposed as light rail stations, senior living, churches, medical clinics, fitness centers (http://www.businessinsider.com/what-will-happen-to-closed-malls-2017-5#before-the-department-store-1). Sounds good to me.

What then, do we do for variety? WE need to get more creative, that’s what.

Go Ethnic

Want some ideas? For one thing, ethnic fashion offers great variety and color without breaking the bank. This skirt is less than $32.00 and if paired with a slightly more conservative blouse/jacket, would knock the socks off in an office.


Rotita.com

The good news is that offerings like these exist everywhere, including online. You don’t have to spent your child’s college fund to look inventive and interesting. And many good retailers work hard- while fighting the on-line trend- to make such offerings available. Because I travel the world, I purchase local ethnic and tribal clothing for mere pennies on the dollar. I never see myself coming and it takes very little to adjust or finish these pieces to make them wearable. There are plenty of people like my friend Pamela in Spokane who search the world over not only for inspiration but also these very same pieces which both please the eye and the body while jumping ship from the factory store, mass-produced corporate crap mindset. Besides, it’s been my very sad experience to note that virtually anything with a Lauren label these days falls apart quickly. That’s how corporate American insults our investment in a brand.


Photo by Alexandre Godreau on Unsplash

Please Patronize Your Local Radicals

The corporate takeover and vampire-like blood sucking of all the best American brands, those stores that offered us cool choices for a reasonable prices, have largely died. There are a few holdouts for now. My advice, for what it’s worth, is patronize your local radicals. Shop with enthusiasm at those Wonders of the World and Indochines and other stores that offer options nobody else does. Reward and value inventiveness, creativity and reasonable pricing. As we head into the unknown waters of tariffs, which is going to directly affect the cost of clothing manufactured overseas by cheap (and child/slave) labor, the prices are going to change. Maybe that’s a good thing. Perhaps then we will once again invest in well-made, excellent quality pieces that last decades, rather than the H&M model that offers wear-once, throw away clothing that adds to the world’s second largest pollution problem (https://www.ecowatch.com/fast-fashion-is-the-second-dirtiest-industry-in-the-world-next-to-big--1882083445.html). Something to consider.


by Caroline Veronez on Unsplash

Get Creative

Go vintage (and rediscover truly well-made clothing). Dump your junk. Hire a closet declutterer. Then from here on out only buy the best you can afford (which is damned good advice for clothing, cars and just about anything else) Eschew water- guzzling t-shirts (https://curiosity.com/topics/it-takes-2700-liters-of-water-to-make-one-t-shirt-curiosity/). Choose class over crass, ridiculous, insultingly-designed and poorly-made so-called “designer fashion.” I know I’m asking a lot. However these choices have huge impacts on our environment, and they also speak to the nascent individuality which lives within us all.

Let’s cater to the courageous retailer who holds out for all of us, to offer tiny shops which pique our curiosity, engage our senses, and add to the rich diversity of our environment. Reclaim your town, your own individuality, and reward the intrepids who won’t sell out to the faceless desert of corporatization.



Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://selfscroll.com/the-mcdonaldization-of-superb-stores/
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