Wait for the bell for fall buys - Apparel Merchandising supplement

Discount Store News, May 6, 1996

Back-to-School apparel will arrive on the sales floor fashionably late.

"The slogan we've come to live by is `off the rack, on the back,' " says Denis Lemire, vice president of merchandising and marketing at Ames, a chain that has been working on refining its planning across all categories for about a year. "Consumers are buying so close to need, and that's caused us to make a big change in our mentality. We're trying to stay as fluid as possible."

"Our Back-to-School buys are running later and later," reports Eric Flodberg, vice president, divisional merchandise manager of childrenswear at Pamida. "We're waiting so we can get a better idea of consumer trends before making our big push."

At the beginning of April, Pamida was in the thick of buying Back-to-School. Kmart said it "was premature to talk about Back-to-School" in mid-March. Ames had not yet made its buys. Sears was just wrapping them up. Not long ago, merchants would have had their programs fully in place by the end of January.

Changing their buying patterns could help discounters come out of this Back-to-School season in better shape than they did in the season past, when a poor apparel environment coupled with a lack of fashion direction and unsatisfactory planning and execution, caused sales to wind up flat for the pivotal months of July, August and September.

According to the NPD Consumer Purchase Panel, childrenswear at discounters generated $2.7 billion during Back-to-School 1995, up marginally from $2.6 billion for the same span in '94.

Part of the problem was apparently due to too much upfront buying. Retailers were routinely buying a whole seasons' worth of goods early in the year, rarely adding to or changing the assortment throughout the season. "Last year, we bought enough rugby knits to last the entire season," says Diane Edwards, divisional merchandise manager of childrenswear at Ames. But consumers don't buy that way anymore. Instead of shopping for all the school clothing a child needs in one shot, they buy on an as-needed basis, or when sales are held. "Now we're only buying enough items to last six weeks at the most," says Edwards, "so we can react better to changes in the market and so the consumer can find fresh merchandise each time she comes in to shop."

Buying closer to need simply makes sense. "There's no point for us to bring in winter clothes when the weather is still warm," says Edwards. "We're delaying the receipt of winter goods and giving the customers something kids can wear now."

Merchants are dealing with private label assortments by setting up a two-fold sourcing system. Commodities are ordered off-shore well in advance of season, while fashion and weather-related goods are sourced domestically for quick turnarounds.

In addition to changing their buying patterns, mass market retailers are doing more pre-buying legwork to ensure that their decisions are right once the goods hit the floor.

Managing the business of children's fashion has in the past been a weakness in many mass market operations. When a hot trend would emerge, such as the way girls' dresses did last year, many chains couldn't find the open-to-buy or floor space to capitalize.

Target, for the most part, has been ahead of its peers because of the way the chain operates--it forecasts its trends in-house and translates those into a mostly private label lineup. The result: Target often has a better handle on fashion direction, and can maneuver its floor space and shift styles with more aplomb than most of its competitors.

Other discounters don't want to miss out any longer either. "We're working on getting better at what we call `infrastructural funding,' which is taking from the poor and giving to the rich," says Skip Chustz, senior vice president and general merchandise manager at ShopKo. "We're doing more pre-planning, trying to manage the business more effectively. If we see a hot trend, we find ways to take floor space away from an underperforming category. That's a challenge, but we as retailers have to get out of last-year-itis and get into what's happening here and now," says Chustz, who has single-digit increase plans for the childrenswear department this year.

"We're learning to shift floor space within the confines of the kids' area," contends Flodberg at Pamida. "We're being much more analytical. There's no question that retailers have to be smarter and quicker to respond to the consumers than they have been in the past."

The need to buy closer to the vest is more evident in girlswear than in boyswear, says Kerin Seeger, divisional merchandise manager of children's apparel at Sears. "We're waiting later and later with girlswear because the trends are coming out of juniors and that's the way that market does business. We just (in the first week of April) made one last trip to Los Angeles to finalize our trend selections."

Girls' trends are more defined than they were last season. Print and color will sway purchases more than silhouette. Forget earth tones; medium-sized florals, ginghams, plaids, border prints, smiley faces and holograms will be done in shades of brights, as well as in black-and-white combinations. The only major change in body style is that skirts have gone from mini to mid-calf. A-line dresses, skooters, skorts and overalls remain important. Textures like ribs and cables and details like zippers, other metal hardware, coverstitching, patches and embroideries reinforce value.