Rethinking young at heart - discount stores improve junior departments

Discount Store News, August 2, 1993 by Paul Demery

At Stuarts Department Stores, merchants are trying on something new in juniors: they're pushing trendy styles in a separate, high-profile department aimed at young, impulse-buying teens and their MTV-driven desires for fashion.

The change is a bold one for the 21-store Franklin, Mass.-based chain, which only last year operated a weakly defined juniors department composed primarily of racks of specially priced commodity tank tops.

Now, in an experiment driven by the enticing potential for fashion-forward sales, Stuarts is betting on teen-centered styles as a way of giving juniors a deftly placed kick in the pants. Apparel experts indicate it's on the right track. "There's a real turnaround, a 'youthquake' going on," says Andrea Levitt, vice president of merchandising at Bonjour.

But nobody's saying it will be easy. "The jury's still out on whether this will work for us," says Denis Lemire, Stuarts senior vice president for merchandise. "It's very labor intensive. There's a lot more styles and purchase orders involved, and we still have one person buying [juniors]."

It isn't just at Stuarts, of course, that juniors still has to prove itself. Although some retailers, such as megachain Sears, are reporting robust juniors sales, the category isn't clean of smudge marks. Many stores are still reporting sluggish activity in juniors as well as overall store sales, and industry-wide juniors figures show a disturbing downward trend over the last three years.

Such figures underscore the need for retailers to rethink the way they sell juniors, says Charles Sobel, vice president of sales for Gitano, which next year will introduce the "GIT" name to highlight its juniors styles.

"The more focused you are the better," he says. "Some chains have five missy buyers and one juniors buyer buying all categories. You can't give juniors justice by having one buyer do the job of five."

Indeed, the lack of aggressiveness has taken its toll.

At combined retail tiers, juniors sales have been virtually slack since 1990, when the category racked up $8.29 billion, followed by $8.306 billion in '91 and $8.249 billion in '92, according to Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD.

Still, a number of merchants and vendors see promising things ahead. Although views are mixed on the future of grunge, bell bottoms and other hot styles, juniors is causing some excitement in a business that targets young consumers known to be spendthrifts.

"Juniors is one of the brightest spots in apparel, with minimum double-digit increases the last four years," says Gregory Blow, fashion merchandise director for Sears, which hangs the "MAINFRAME" title over its fashion-forward juniors areas to make them distinct from other women's apparel. To set the tone for Sears as an apparel-dominant store on the move further up-scale, the MAINFRAME section is usually located at mall entrances to give the store "a feeling of real fashion excitement," he says.

At Bradlees, which has long maintained a separate juniors section, juniors sales are "outpacing other softlines," says Karen Cotton, divisional merchandise manager of juniors and ready-to-wear. In a study of customer preferences at 15 of its stores last April, the Braintree, Mass.-based retailer found a strong demand for fashion forward apparel among its current shoppers, for whom value has become more important than brand or type of store. "My customer is interested in the right look at the right price, but is not really interested in brand names," says Cotton.

Yet even Sears and Bradlees aren't resting on their laurels in juniors merchandising. Sears is commissioning a fall marketing campaign for MAINFRAME by New York ad agency Young & Rubicam. Bradlees is setting a new pace for larger, trendy juniors departments at its new 207,000-square-foot Yonkers, N.Y., store, where its massive 4,700-square-foot juniors department went through a name change, from "Juniors" to "Young Attitudes;" the change replaces what had appeared to be a high-school-age-specific title with one that calls more to the way women of different ages feel about clothes, Cotton says.

Other Bradlees stores will also be getting the new department name and added space, which will rise from 1,500 to 2,000 square feet in the average 80,000-square-foot location.

"The juniors customers were out this year, out there doing their thing," says Michael Kipperman, president of New York City-based Gotham Apparel Corp., which serves as a licensee of casual women's wear for Sasson and Cherokee as well as producing its own Turtle Bay label. Kipperman says his business this year is "up dramatically, about 90 percent." Juniors products that are moving particularly well, he says, are mesh and lacey tops, screen printed oversized T-shirts, and crop tops that leave midriffs bear. Retail price points for the popular mesh tops range from $9.99 to $16.99 at discounters, compared to points as high as $19.99 at department stores.

"Junior knit tops with hoods and embroideries were probably a key issue" driving sales, adds Bruce Myers, vice president of merchandising and operations for Joseph M. Neira Corp., which makes women's knitwear sold under the Sasson label as well as under a major retailer's private label and Neira's own Just On label.