Home Alone 3
Warren Shoulberg, editorial director for HTT, always seems to have something to say about things.
Leadership
Say what you want about the bad old mill days in the home textiles business - and they sure had their bad parts - but there were also some good things about the way the industry functioned then.With several very large, very powerful and very dominant companies controlling the sheet and towel business, you had what amounted to a benevolent dictatorship in home textiles. Those giant mills - West Poi... Read More
Comments (1)Home (Very) Goods
They opened a new Home Goods store down the road from me last week.You'd think it was the second coming of Sam Walton, R.H. Macy and Sol Price rolled into one.The store was jammed on opening Saturday with shoppers lined up at the cash registers, eagerly waiting to hand over a piece of their disposable incomes. And all without the benefit of grand opening coupons, klieg lights or skywriting.Of cour... Read More
Comments (0)Ron Johnson Wasn't Wrong...
But that doesn't mean he was right, either.Say whatever you want about Johnson's failed attempt to reinvent JC Penney. And it doesn't matter whether you thought he was a brilliant visionary or an empty sweater who was in way over his head, Johnson's basic premise was absolutely correct: The Penney Company was a broken, dysfunctional and declining retail business that was headed for the mall scrap... Read More
Comments (3)Can the Internet Save the Home Textiles Industry?
At first it was just a random comment or two, and then the topic started to show up more frequently and by the end of the week, it was the single most mentioned theme of all the conversations I was involved in during the New York home textiles market two weeks ago.Everyone, it seemed, wanted to talk about how the Internet was in the process of totally changing the business model of the American ho... Read More
Comments (5)New Blood, Old Sweat & the Usual Tears
So, assuming you've made it through another season (and sadly, some of our friends have not), you're back in beautiful downtown textilesland for New York market week. As usual, there is the look of familiarity to much of what will go on this week. That's just the nature of the beast. But there are also some new twists and turns this time around and while we're not talking crazy, stupid here, you m... Read More
Comments (2)Martha, Macy's and the Plano Truth
Say this about our lovely Miss Martha: She is always predictable.Her testimony last week in the trial trying to figure out the rights to her brand between Macy's and JCPenney was classic Martha: Equal parts charming, intelligent, arrogant, amusing, reeking of entitlement and altogether entertaining. If you want all the juicy details, go get the transcript. Her four hours on the witness stand follo... Read More
Comments (1)Mirror, Mirror…
If you've been following the recent news coming out of Bangladesh about deplorable working conditions in textiles factories and the fires that have caused hundreds of deaths there, you no doubt have felt some outrage. After all, how could they allow this to happen?Well, for those of you who remember the old comic strip character Pogo, your outrage needs to be pointed in a different direction. As P... Read More
Comments (6)The Retail Cliff
Add JCP (the retailer formerly known as J.C. Penney, aka The Penney Company) to the ever-growing list of entities teetering on the cliff.No, the company is not going bankrupt, much less out of business, and chances are a retailer known as Penney's will exist for some time to come.But like our beloved legislators in Washington, D.C., the executives for the company at Plano, Texas, headquarters are... Read More
Comments (1)Heimtextale
So, after yet another rock'em-sock'em week in beautiful downtown Heimtextil earlier this month, the logical question is exactly what is the story with the global home textiles market?Let's face it, if you can't figure it out after spending a week immersed in all manner of sheet and towel humanity, it just ain't going to happen any other way.For us old political junkies, being at Heimtextil is a fa... Read More
Comments (0)Ghosts of Christmas Ads Past
Assuming we're still within the statue of limitations, it's a fascinating exercise to see how some of the retailers in the business handled their holiday advertising and marketing. The campaigns were all over the place, from sappy to happy and from thoughtful to clueless...and everything in between. Here are some observations from the season just passed, noting that this particular observer based... Read More
Comments (0)What a Difference a Year Makes
If it's January, it must be Heimtextil, the traditional start of the new textiles year and the moment when everyone in the industry takes stock of business - theirs, their competitors and the world in general. This time last year, there were a lot of big question marks hanging over the home textiles universe: 1. Would China increasingly turn its attention to its domestic market, resulting in it tu... Read More
Comments (0)Triskaidekaphobia
Fear of the number 13 is a fairly common malady and that's likely to surface with more frequency next year.But as they say, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself ... unless you happen to be somebody who really should be scared about the coming year. Indeed there are a number of fearful situations that have the potential to be quite frightening over the next year.As luck would have it, I c... Read More
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