Clothing concepts

Discount Store News, Dec 8, 1997

From the very beginnings of the discount store industry, when fledgling retailers like S. Klein, Mays and Alexander's gave retail bargains a mortar and glass venue, to the intricate strategies of today's sophisticated corporate giants, apparel has played a pivotal role in the plans of mass merchants.

Currently, the combined apparel sales of full-line discounters, off-pricers and factory outlet operators generate nearly a third of the retail clothing dollars in the United States, far surpassing the business rung up at either specialty or department stores.

In 1962, the year the modern industry was born with the creation of Kmart, Wal-Mart and Target, no one would have predicted that the mass market could hold the dominant share of the apparel business. Branded manufacturers eschewed the discounters, choosing instead to do business with their traditional, more upscale customers. At the time, they didn't have that much to lose. After all, total discount retail sales from the prior year generated only about $4.5 billion.

Today, some of the apparel industry's biggest companies, VF Corp. and Sara Lee, for example, count discounters as major -- if not their biggest -- customers. It would be foolish, and not in the best interest of stockholders, to ignore the mass market; consumers shopping at Wal-Mart's outlets alone now spend close to $20 billion per year on apparel.

Obviously the apparel would has undergone extraordinary changes during the past 35 years. It was during the 1960s that Kmart emerged as the undisputed sales leader in the discount store world, and it was during this decade that Joseph Antonini joined this offshoot of S.S. Kresge. In the 1980s, Antonini made apparel a priority for the firm when he became president of Kmart's apparel division. Of course, Antonini eventually held the top job at the company. But Kmart's top spot fell to Wal-Mart.

During the 1970s, the regional discounters emerged as the fashion leaders of the tier. Venture and Clover were spun off as divisions of department store chains, and Bradlees began one of its many attempts at trading up.

By the mid-1980s, the regionals -- and Target -- were beginning to capitalize on shoppers who were becoming estranged from the designer names and high prices of department stores.

During the current decade, mass retailers are more solidly committed to the apparel business than ever. This special issue of Apparel Merchandising examines the concepts -- licensing, branding, regional leadership and technology -- and people who have made mass retailers the primary outlets for apparel consumers in the United States.