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Posted by Jennifer Marks on March 11, 2010
The New York Home Fashions Market winds down today, with a few suppliers reporting an appointment or two tomorrow. A few bullet points from my notebook: “Positive.” The word of the week. Nearly every supplier I spoke with had a healthy slate of appointments. Not one complained of an account failing to show. With retail inventories running low and many 4Q retail financials exceeding expectations, there is open-to-buy again. Manufacturers, forced to tighten up in the face of rock-bottom demand last year, are also lean on inventory, with fewer close-outs available then usual. Pricing. Cotton prices in January were up 34% compared to a year ago, and with farmers growing less cotton, they’re likely to remain high going foward. This isn’t a blip, say cotton buyers, it’s a reset. Down and feather prices are up 100% or more compa...Read More
Posted by Jennifer Marks on March 9, 2010
The time: Six months ago, during the September market in New York.The characters: Your extremely sporatic blogger, a colleague and our 23-year-old, male photographer. The setting: Hitting the sidewalk following a showroom walk-through, one of many. DIALOGUE: Photog: It's weird. Extremely sporatic blogger (ESB): What? Photog: It's, people keep showing you this stuff that's supposed to be for 'young' customers. ESB: Yeah? Photog: I don't see anything anybody I know would buy. ESB: Nothing? Photog: No. FLASH FORWARD Monday night, March 8, 2010. Same characters, same situation. A week (and weekend) of preview appointments have now passed by. Photog: Remember what we were talking about last market?...Read More Industries: Product News
Posted by Jennifer Marks on January 5, 2010
Opening day of Heimtextil 2010 is just a week away. There are expected to be fewer exhibitors. Buyers? That depends up who you're looking for.The size of individual U.S. buying groups has declined as major accounts - retailers and suppliers - secured alliances post-2005. For many exhibitors, the show has more to do these days with find extra-U.S. markets to tap. Indian home textiles giant Welspun will be back this year for the first time since 2004, but with an eye to expanding its European market. A few outward-looking U.S. companies will be there, too. Maybe too few. There was a movement afoot in early 2009 as several U.S. companies sought for a way to pool their resources and reach out to international markets. In the end, not enough were willing to committ financially to the effort. It's hard to knock a business in a bruta...Read More
Posted by Jennifer Marks on May 13, 2009
Financial news reports on Wednesday were dominated by the U.S. Commerce Department’s morning announcement that retail sales fell back a bit -- 0.4% -- last month. The National Retail Federation --which extracts sales of autos, gas and restaurants from the equation and adjusts for the shift of Easter from March last year to April this year -- also put the drop-off of ‘pure’ retail sales at 0.4%. The Dow fell, the Nasdaq fell, the S&P fell. According to CNBC: “Wall Street's rally got a dose of reality Wednesday when retail...Read More Industries: Financial
Posted by Jennifer Marks on May 7, 2009
Sears/Kmart was the major sponsor of opening night for the 5th annual Design on a Dime benefit this evening in Manhattan. The charity benefiting is Housing Works, which provides services to homeless and low-income New Yorkers with HIV and AIDS.Big turnout. Nicely done event. Check out the photo gallery. The bait for this correspondent: an early look at fall 2010 home lines for Country Living (making its debut at both nameplates later this year), Jaclyn Smith, Ty Pennington and Cannon. Good, strong color across the board. Fresh prints. Don’t know how heavy on solid color these lines will put out when it’s time to hit the floor, but it certainly wasn’t the focus toni...Read More
Posted by Jennifer Marks on May 6, 2009
Atlantic Monthly correspondent Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, has posted a meditation on evolving consumer habits. The emergence of new consumption patterns takes time. The Great Depression began in 1929, and it was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the new suburban lifestyle burst onto the scene fully formed. My dad was an eight-year-old in 1929; my mother just five at the time. Both grew up in small apartments in Newark's Italian district, packed with nine or so family members. My father's family had no refrigerator and even lacked full plumbing. They could scarcely imagine how dramatically their lives would...Read More
Posted by Jennifer Marks on April 16, 2009
The New Yorker this week has an interesting piece on its Financial Page about the fate of companies that invest in R&D, marketing and acquisitions during a recession vs. those that whack costs and hunker down. Only about a page long. Worth a read.
Posted by Jennifer Marks on April 16, 2009
The New Yorker this week has an interesting piece on its Financial Page about the fate of companies that invest in R&D, marketing and acquisitions during a recession vs. those that whack costs and hunker down. Only about a page long. Worth a read.
Posted by Jennifer Marks on April 15, 2009
Wal-Mart ceo Mike Duke told The Today Show this morning he thinks the recession will change consumer behavior for the long term. Meantime, research from consultancy Retail Forward finds that while Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have altered their shopping habits, the Gen Y and Senior demographics mostly have not. The biggest change consumers said they’ve made: eschewing impulse buys. That’s easy to understand. You’ve got to think just about everybody has had at least one conversation with their spouse or loved ones about how they’ll get along without a job -- and how they’re preparing for the possibility. Treating oneself doesn&rs...Read More
Posted by Jennifer Marks on April 2, 2009
 Or is anyone else wondering how the explosion of recycled PET plastic fibers, fills and other products comports with what one would assume is a larger and more eco-friendly goal of reducing plastic generally? Recycling plastic has become an industry -- and no industry can sustain itself without raw materials.I dig the motivation to recycle post-consumer and post-industrial waste. But in doing so are we increasing demand for such waste? Maybe this is simply an acknowledgement that we’re going to go on cranking out waste and we might as well find something useful and more environmentally friendly to do with it. Still scratching my head.
Posted by Jennifer Marks on March 8, 2009
Remember a few years ago when seemingly everybody had at least one thing in their showrrom that was an interpretation of Shabby Chic? Now it’s Anthropologie. That’s the read I’ve gotten so far from a series of market preview appointments we had last week. Here are a few other top-of-the-head impressions based on what I’ve seen so far: Color is back with a vengeance. Deep, rich blues. Aubergine. Lavender. Oranges. Peeps of yellow. Pale gray. Platinum. Brown, brown and more brown paired with blue, blue and ...Read More
Posted by Jennifer Marks on February 25, 2009
For what it’s worth…An outfit called Prosper Technologies that builds consumer demand forecasts by analyzing survey data has come up with a list of retailers that stand to gain share or lose ground over the next 75 days. The presumptive winners that deal in home textiles will come as no surprise: Family Dollar and Walmart. (The lists were compiled in alphabetical order.) In the “they could be winners” line-up: Costco and Sam’s Club. That list also includes Fred’s, but from a parochial point of view I must note the chain hasn’t been feeling the love for home lately. But then again, Target ha...Read More
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