Saturday, 26 September, 2009 1:38 PM
Retail Recovery:
Light at the End of the Tunnel
Expert
Believes Retail Market Will Emerge From Recession by 2011
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Photo
credit: barnesandnoble.com
"Webs
of Power" by Darlene Quinn
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Darlene
Quinn thinks that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sounds
like a reverse Chicken Little.
For the last two weeks, the head of the Fed has been declaring
the recession is already over, even if it doesn’t feel
like it, and that recovery is around the corner. Quinn –
a former senior executive with the Bullocks Wilshire department
store chain and author of the novel Webs of Power from Emerald
Book Company (www.darlenequinn.net)
– translated Bernanke’s comments to mean, “things
are less bad than they were.”
“Part of me has to wonder if the Fed chair is saying what
he’s saying to help us avoid a fourth quarter retail bloodbath
like we had last year, or if he really believes what he’s
saying,” she said. “The truth is, I don’t
think he’s too far off track, but let’s not fool
ourselves. Some very specific things have to take place in order
for retailers to be able to say they are recovering from the
recession, and those things aren’t going to completely
fall in line until the beginning of 2011.”
One Step Up, No Steps Back – The first thing that needs
to happen is that retailers need to be able to post a gain over
last year’s numbers, according to Quinn.
“We don’t have to post a huge gain, but we have
to post a gain of some kind,” she said. “Even if
it’s one-tenth of one percent, we need to see an advance
over last year’s numbers, if only so we can say that we
haven’t lost any more ground. We can’t move forward
if we don’t stop the bleeding, so that’s the first
requirement before recover comes home to roost.”
The Return of “Value” Shoppers – Quinn believes
that the recession cost American retailers one of its most important
customers, the “value” shopper.
“There are essentially three kinds of consumers in the
mass market,” she said. “There are ‘price’
shoppers, whose primary concern is the cost of goods. They are
typically middle to lower middle class, blue collar folks who
have tight budgets, so they shop at discount big box stores
like Wal-Mart. On the other extreme, there are ‘luxury’
shoppers who have money regardless of the economic conditions.
They summer in the Hamptons, and they buy luxury all the way
in both goods and services. The recession doesn’t affect
them any more than a stiff breeze. They’ll always buy
what they want, when they want. In the middle is the ‘value”
shopper, who is typically middle to upper middle class, and
they don’t mind paying a few extra dollars for extra service
and better quality. ‘Value’ shoppers became ‘price’
shoppers during the recession. They fled the mall department
stores so they could push a cart at Wal-Mart or Target.”
For true recovery to be imminent, the “value” shopper
must re-emerge from the discount stores and head back to the
department stores, Quinn added.
“That middle group represents the growth of the economy,”
she said. “The money lost in the retail industry was lost
primarily because that middle group of consumers in the middle
classes stopped spending discretionary income, because they
just plain didn’t have it to spend. If 2010 is going to
show some solid growth, we need to see the ‘value’
shopper come back to the mall, and retailers need to empower
their managers and employees to really go the extra mile to
attract that customer back to the fold.”
2010: A Holiday Odyssey – The final piece of the puzzle
is the fourth quarter of 2010, Quinn said.
“The holiday season after this one is where the rubber
will meet the road,” she said. “If we stop the bleeding
this year, then we should be able to walk again by next year.
If the fourth quarter retail receipts of 2010 show a solid increase,
maybe 3 to 5 percent, we’ll be able to pop the champagne
corks on New Year’s Eve feeling like we’ve turned
the corner. Retailers need to get smart and start thinking of
being more customer-centric so that they can convert ‘price’
shoppers back to being “value” shoppers and help
push the market down the road to recovery.”
About Darlene Quinn
Darlene Quinn is an author and journalist from Long Beach, California.
Her novel, Webs of Power (winner of the 2009 Indie National
Excellence Award for Fiction), is about the back-room wheeling’s,
dealings and double-dealings behind the scenes of a national
retail chain, based primarily on real-life people and companies
Quinn encountered during her career in the retail industry.
As part of a nine-member management team for the Bullocks Wilshire
Specialty Department stores, Quinn has the insider’s perspective
on the rise and fall of major department stores.
Source:
News and Experts
