The Rage Diaries

The Gap post y'all knew I was going to write

That handsome gentlemen to the left is former Gap CEO Paul Pressler. As you may well know, he resigned Monday ("Gap CEO Pressler Resigns," SFChron, Jan 22, 07). The Gap is now in the unpleasant position of finding a new CEO to rescue a sinking brand. ("Gap Needs a CEO and Many Qualify; Will Any Apply?" WSJ, Jan 24, 07)

Here's the money quote in that article:

Perhaps Gap's biggest problem -- and the new CEO's biggest challenge -- is that it has lost its way with American shoppers who once flocked to its Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy stores as the darlings of the mall. The Gap brand is now so large that it can't be too trendy, or it might not appeal to enough customers to keep its stores running. But to make its styles attractive to a huge group of shoppers, it produces clothes so basic that they can't command a price premium.

This really is a problem. An interview Teri Agins did with fashion consultant David Wolfe summed up the woes any basic clothing vendor faces:

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: What's the biggest change across the greater fashion landscape nowadays?

MR. WOLFE: I think there is going to be this big breakdown of the whole system. I think there is going to be a clothing/apparel industry that dresses the great American public in casual everyday clothes. And then there are going to be the fashion specialty chains -- the fast-fashion people, the boutiques, whatever you want to call them, who deliver fashion with a capital "F." At every price point.

[...]

WSJ: Now that Americans at every level can buy the newest fashion looks at every price level, have their tastes become more sophisticated?

MR. WOLFE: I think there is no such thing as a broad-based American mainstream anymore. And that's one of the major problems that fashion retailers are having at the moment. Instead of becoming one great homogenized society, after the Internet we are now much more segmented and layered..

-- "Goodbye, Mainstream," WSJ, Jan 22, 07

The interview goes on to note that size isn't always an asset: the larger you get, the greater the pressure to appeal to more shoppers, and the more homogenous the clothing.

So here is my crazy suggestion the Gap can grow by shrinking. Take Forth & Towne. (which we have, here and here and here and here and here) That chain is tiny, yet that chain has fans, if MayLynn's recent post "Forth & Towne? No. Forth & Love" is any indication. So maybe it's time to convert some Gap stores to Forth & Towne. It gives Gap the chance to redefine a market niche early on -- setting itself apart from Chico's, for example -- and create a group of loyal shoppers. Loyal shoppers = higher same-store sales, which make for happier investors.

Alternately: the Gap can take a page out of the J. Crew playbook (which, heh, was written by former Gap CEO Mickey Drexler -- see "Mickey Drexler's Redemption," NYMag, Nov 29, 04). I vividly remember the company's relaunch of its flagship catalog in fall 2003, and here's what stuck out: the total number of items for sale dropped dramatically, the total number of looks in the catalog narrowed dramatically, and each (much more expensive) item came with a backstory explaining why the materials or craftsmanship made this a new basic for a discerning customer.

And the company's continued that strategy -- in some circles, the names "Wellesley cable" or "Sophia short dress" are now cultural shorthand and collectible items. J. Crew seems to be continuing that with their new, more casual brand, Madewell 1937. It's not enough to buy a pair of jeans -- you have to get an education on the washes and hand-finishing.

Pretentious? Probably. Effective. Probably. People who buy something from J. Crew or Madewell have an idea what the brand stands for -- who "probably" buys it. And as a smart woman told me in 2005," What does the Gap stand for? Nobody has any idea."

So maybe the company needs to grow by closing some doors. Shut down some stores, pour some love into F&T, then look at the Gap and decide, "This is who we are for and this is what they want." Everyone else? Well, they're not shopping there now. Who cares what they think?

(EDITED TO ADD: And, in reading this recent report on a speech he made at the National Retail Federation's, it seems like I am not too far off my assessment of Drexler's J. Crew strategy:

 

He dismissed the notion that the popularity of "fast fashion," or the type of low-priced, trendy merchandise sold at chains like H&M, has shrunk demand for high-priced, high-quality clothing. J. Crew sells mid-to high-end clothing and accessories.

 

"At the end of the day, there are enough customers buying high-quality products. But it's our job as merchandisers to create the needs and wants of customers," Drexler said. "That's what I do for a living."

-- "Drexler: American Retailing Lacks Inspiration," CNN, Jan 16, 07)

Emphasis mine.)

Frostbite in California, sunburn in D.C.

Our Subaru has an external-temperature gauge in the dashboard, and it is somewhat weird to be tooling toward the gym in the morning and seeing the gauge read 43 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm used to it being at least a little warmer here. And this nippy-Bay-Area-winter phenomenon felt a little weirder after I read yesterday's "Seldom Heard in January: Hot Enough for Ya?" in the WaPo. 73 degrees Fahrenheit! In January? Back when I lived there, January was all about fretting over how not to freeze during inauguration, stocking up on bread in anticipation of snow days, casting longing looks at Bahamas posters strategically placed in travel agency windows.

That this should appear the same day the NYT runs the speculative piece "The Ununited States, When It Comes to the Weather," is just delightful. The argument in the piece is this: because the U.S. has such vastly different weather systems, it's hard for anyone to make global warming seem like a national issue. Days like yesterday certainly seem to back that theory up.

A non-statistical sample

As you are all aware, we bought our house during what may well have been the very apex of the so-called bubble. I had been consoling myself with the thought that we could dine out on this tidbit for years -- "That's right! We bought the house and then the market sputtered to a halt! Make us the anecdotal lede in a story on bubble madness! Ha ha ha!" -- except a re-appraisal report came back with unexpectedly good news. We couldn't afford our house if it were on the market now.

So we are very lucky. I think?

Anyway, I was looking at the Alameda listings because I like to see how my micro-market is doing, and two gave me pause.

Procrastinators, rejoice!

I don't know how it is in your area, but around here, the Marines have already collected all the Toys for Tots barrels. If you're smacking your forehead in consternation, stop it. You'll leave a mark. Also, you won't have a hand free to navigate MyTwoFrontTeeth, a site that matches up kids with their wishlist toys courtesy of your small ($30 and under) donations. There are approximately 1000 kids' wishes to fulfill.

The Bay Area-based organization is taking donations up to December 24. What they do:

We research community organizations that work with underprivileged children and carefully choose our partners.  We then give toy catalogs (20 toys under  $25, selected by our staff)  to these organizations to distribute among the children they support. On each profile card, the children tell us about themselves (name, age, favorite food, etc.), draw a picture on the back, and choose one toy as their holiday wish.

After collecting the cards, we scan the kids' drawings and enter their information into an online profile for each child.  Sponsors from around the community can then visit MyTwoFrontTeeth.org, browse through all of the children's profiles, and sponsor a child (or two!) by completing checkout. The toys are bulk-purchased through our distributors and are shipped to the community organizations where they are wrapped and given to the children a few days before the holidays.

Surfing through the kids to sponsor is just ... oh, man, when a kid says his favorite animal is a monkey and he loves singing carols during the holidays, it is hard not to give in and get him that set of bongos he wants.

Best of all, you can give gifts in someone else's name. So if you have a few hard-to-shop-for types on your list, just pop on over to MyTwoFrontTeeth and sponsor a few gifts. It's a win-win-win situation!

Score one for the secretive Teutons

Well, it looks like that Trader Joe's is going to get built in Berkeley after all ("Berkeley Zoning Board Welcomes Trader Joe's," SFGate, Dec 15, 06).

You will recall that some people had objected to this, because the store is owned by "a secretive German family."

Safety on wheels

Like a lot of other Bay Areans, I've been following the efforts to find the Kim family. After learning about their ordeal (they got lost owing to remote roads and bad weather), I made a note to check our road safety kit.

I've had a road safety kit in the back of the car for years, because I am convinced that I am destined to be stranded in my car at some point, so by God, I'm going to be prepared for it. Back in New York, my safety kit included extra gloves, a box of cat litter and a snow shovel.

Out here, it's more run-of-the-mill: road flares, jumper cables, a first-aid kit, a flashlight, tire inflator, wet wipes, Shout wipes, water, sunscreen, paper and pen, emergency snacks, Thomas Bros. California atlas, towing rope, fire extinguisher and blankets. (I keep it all in one of these -- and I still have room to chuck my gym bag, the canvas bags I use for grocery shopping, plus Phil's work backpack.)

If you drive a lot, I urge you to please, please get yourself a road safety kit. Those of you who are super-girly (or really, really secure in your masculinity) might like the Safety Girl Roadside Emergency Kit for Women. And those of you who don't consider nail files and breath freshener to be emergency essentials may want to peruse the offerings at AutoBarn. They come at a variety of price points, and contents vary depending on what you consider an emergency, and how comfortable you are doing basic emergency maintenance on your car.

Those of you who prefer to roll your own will find the Edmunds.com instructions for assembling your own kit super-helpful.   I know I did; I'll be tossing a roll of duct tape in the car tonight when I get home.

Amazon.com: the enemy?

My brother and I were chatting about e-mail newsletters yesterday, and he typed that he considers them useful for only three things: Reviews, Recaps and Resources. In other words, they're good for depositing reports about specific items, summarizing recent news, or providing tidbits that will come in handy in the future. (I would add that newsletters are also good for providing Real-time alerts, for those of us who aren't married to an RSS feed. But I digress.)

Anyway, among the newsletters I rely on for reviews and reference: bookstore newsletters. I think these are a great vehicle for promoting the stores as must-go destinations, and I've been curious as to which ones do a good job.

Locally, I currently subscribe to the e-mail newsletters for City Lights, Stacey's Bookstore, Pegasus and Pendragon, Books Inc., and Kepler's Books. (I'd have signed up for Cody's, but it's not offering a newsletter yet.)

However, the one local bookstore who turns out fabulous newsletters is not local to me at all: Powell's Books. Their newsletters are a delight to read, with links to reviews, interviews and store events. I get the review-a-day, technical and general bookstore news dispatches. Each one makes me excited to be a bibliophile, and each one makes me want to visit Portland just so I can empty my wallet and fill my luggage at Powell's.

I thought about Powell's newsletters last week as I walked by Pendragon Books on College Avenue in Oakland. There's a sign in their window promoting Northern California's independent booksellers (reproduced at left), comparing them primarily to Amazon.com and pointing out the benefits to buying locally.

(Unfortunately, the sign does not also explain the benefits to buying from a local independent bookseller compared to buying at a local Border's or Barnes & Noble. That I'd like to see, because I suspect the online book-buying audience is not always the same as the bricks-and-mortar crowd, so comparing a place like Pendragon to Amazon doesn't seem like an apples-to-apples comparison.)

ANYWAY. I pasased the sign and I realized ... the last four books I bought online, I bought at Powell's, based purely on what I had read in their newsletters.

Powell's newsletters are a model for how local booksellers can cultivate a wider online audience. There doesn't need to be an "us vs. them" mentality when it comes to buying offline and online. Do it like Powell's: make your locations the must-go destination for the local community of eager minds, and make your newsletters your sales emissaries to those of us who can't be there in the flesh. Provide compelling content that people can't get anywhere else. Make those newsletters resources, not merely leaflets for what's going on at your store.

"San Francisco values"?

Apparently this is the new political phrase meant to fire up the right-wing faithful ("Three Dirty Words: San Francisco Values," SFGate, Nov 3, 06), but honestly, when I hear the phrase "San Francisco values," I just get confused.

Are these people talking about burritos? Our local runners' penchants for wearing costumes in any road race? The dual obsessions with real estate and finding a parking place? Or are they still hung up on that whole "Yay, civil rights for committed homosexual couples! Yay, care-not-cash! Yay, proposal to ensure workers are not treated worse then rented mules!" thing?

I mean, it's just not clear. What would Bill O'Reilly have against delicious burritos?

Secretive Teutons and cheap booze? Sounds like a party to me!

"Trader Joe's is a nonunion store owned by a secretive German family that sells specialty food and low-cost alcohol," said Steve Wollmer, who lives 250 feet from the site. "Do we really need this in our neighborhood?"

-- "Neighbors Say No to Popular Market," SFGate, Oct 30, 06

I have to admit, it took me about five minutes to stop giggling after reading that quote. A secretive German family! Oh, no!

So here's the deal: apparently, some folks in Berkeley are not too keen about the prospect of a new building that combines a Trader Joe's and apartment housing. Last time I checked, Berkeley wasn't exactly grappling with a housing surplus, but that seems to be secondary to the real gripe, which is that U.C. Berkeley students and Telegraph avenue winos will be able to stagger over to the store for cheap booze. Apparently, spending 85% of your panhandling take on overpriced booze is the greater good here? Or is it driving to get the cheap booze?

All Summer in a Day

It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

-- "All Summer in a Day," by Ray Bradbury.

Replace "Venus" with "The Bay Area" and you get an idea of what the past month has felt like.