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Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Teens Are Shopping Differently, Could Cause Trouble, For These Brands

Learning how teens spend has been a years-long effort for retailers because their likes and dislikes can decide the fate of a brand or a season. Cracking the code on today’s teens, dubbed digital natives, is no exception.

As retailers gear up for the industry’s critical holiday sales season, the latest reading on teens may offer some cause for worry: Teens, part of Gen Z, have lowered their self-reported annual spending by 4% from a year earlier, to $2,400, the lowest level in eight years, investment bank Piper Jaffray reported in its Taking Stock With Teens fall survey, released Tuesday.
One culprit: About a third of the teens, up from a quarter a year earlier, said they believe the economy is getting worse, according to the survey, which polled 9,500 teens across 42 U.S. states, with an average age of 15.8 years. But that’s not the only reason. Female teens’ spending on handbags has hit a new low of $90 a year in the 38th edition of semi-annual survey, less than half of the record $197 reported in the spring 2006 survey. Cosmetics spending also declined more than 20%, to $106, from a year earlier.

Overall, the survey’s results echo other findings associated with today’s teens. For instance, they care about social and political issues including global warming, immigration and gun control. To do their part for the environment, nearly half of the teens said they are changing their habits, including using more metal straws, recycling more and using less plastic.

Here are other takeaways:

The preppy-style teen uniform is out: Mirroring fashion brands’ performance scorecards, the survey showed athletic labels dominate teens’ top fashion preferences. Lululemon hit a new survey high as the No. 7 preferred apparel brand and catapulted to No. 2 among upper-income female teens. Nike, whose stock recently jumped to a record high after it posted better-than-expected results, remained the No. 1 shoe and clothing label for teens.
Skate shoe Vans remained teens’ No. 2 favorite footwear brand, followed by Adidas and Converse. Plastic-clog maker Crocs saw the biggest jump, rising to the No. 7 shoe spot, from No. 13.
“The casualization of fashion continues,” said the 70-page study, adding that preppy brands including Ralph Lauren, Sperry and Vineyard Vines continue to lose share among teen apparel makers to athletic labels. The teen fast-fashion label Forever 21, which recently filed for bankruptcy protection, saw its favorite apparel brand share among teens decline 2 percentage points, to 3%, over the past year.

Accessible luxury handbags are losing favor: As handbag spending hit a new survey low, Michael Kors, Kate Spade and Coach saw their combined favorite-brand share among female teens decline to 49%, from 57% last year. Michael Kors, while still No. 1, saw its share slump to 27% this fall, from 36% in spring 2018.
European luxury brands including Louis Vuitton and Gucci, on the other hand, picked up mind share among teens, thanks partly to online resale platforms including The RealReal and StockX that give them “access to luxury for less,” according to the report.

Food takes the biggest chunk of teens’ wallet share: Food has continued to outpace clothing as the biggest spending category for teens, the study showed. For instance, restaurants represented 23% of spending among upper-income teens in the most recent survey, topping clothing at 21%.
Where teens are eating doesn’t bode well for full-service restaurants: The percentage favoring limited-service restaurants has jumped to 68%, from 44% ten years earlier.
Their favorite restaurant? Chic-fil-A, followed by Starbucks and McDonald’s in the top five for both upper-income and average-income households. Fast-casual and fast-food chains Chipotle, Dunkin’ and Taco Bell rounded out the top five for either of the income groups. Olive Garden was the only full-service chain to make the top five.

Amazon is cultivating a bigger teen following: 52% of teens voted Amazon as their favorite e-commerce site, up from 47% a year earlier. Nike, in second place, trailed far behind, with a 4% mind share.

Amazon’s major rival eBay, No. 5 with a 2% share, “continues to face mind share challenges with teens,” according to the study. Amazon’s major brick-and-mortar rivals Walmart and Target didn’t make the top ten. In another sign of Amazon’s growing popularity with teens, it’s become the No. 5 beauty-shopping destination for them, up from No. 17 a year earlier, according to the survey.
“Amazon remains well positioned to take share of overall retail sales, and having the support of the teen (demographic) is critical,” the study said.
Amazon isn’t just winning teens from the upper-income household bracket, either. With the Amazon Prime adoption rate among teens rising to 78%, from 74% a year earlier, the study found the growth was led by teens from the lowest household-income bracket ($21,000 to $41,000).

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Coach brand back to ‘full health’ from selling many handbags

Parent company 'Tapestry' shares soar nearly 12% in Tuesday trading on the sale of COACH bags

Tapestry says that merchandising and marketing with spokesperson Selena Gomez has given the Coach brand a bump.

GlobalData Retail declared the Coach brand back to “full health” in a Tuesday note after Coach parent company Tapestry Inc. reported better-than-expected earnings that got a boost from North American customers who were ready to shop.
Tapestry shares TPR, -0.57% closed Tuesday up 12%.
Tapestry reported fourth-fiscal-quarter adjusted earnings of 60 cents per share, ahead of the 57-cents FactSet consensus, and sales of $1.48 billion, beating the $1.47 billion FactSet guidance.
Coach’s president, Joshua Schulman, highlighted the results of the company’s North American brand-tracking survey, which found that “premium” consumers and millennials have an improved view of the brand, which he attributed to the company’s marketing, featuring Selena Gomez; merchandising that focused on handbags priced in the $300-to-$400 range; in-store experience; and the reception for its Signature line of bags.

When Tapestry was still called Coach Inc. the company launched an effort to rehabilitate the Coach brand, pulling back distribution at department stores and increasing focus on a higher price point in the interest of the brand’s image.
Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, declared the company’s efforts a success after fourth-quarter sales rose 5%.
“In our view, this is a very respectable result, which, once again, underlines the return to full health of a brand that once suffered from ubiquity and excessive discounting,” Saunders said. “The performance in the U.S. was particularly strong, aided in large part by the more robust consumer economy, which has spurred spending on luxury products.”
Tapestry’s other brands include Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman. Tapestry continues to integrate Kate Spade into the fold after it was acquired in 2017. And Stuart Weitzman continued to suffer from operational issues.

By Tonya Garcia

Published: Aug 15, 2018 4:27 p.m. ET

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Coach to Buy Kate Spade in $2.4 Billion Deal

A statement released by Coach said the combined company will create a "leading luxury lifestyle company" supported by "significant expertise in handbag design, merchandising, supply chain, and retail operations."

The luxury retailer Coach announced on Monday that it agreed to buy Kate Spade for $18.50 a share, for a total transaction value of $2.4 billion.
The per-share acquisition price is 27.5% higher than Kate Spade's share price as of December 27, the last day of trading before deal rumors started affecting the stock price.
Still, it's 23% below a nine-month high of $24.10 reached February 27.
Shares for the handbag and accessories maker surged by 8.1% in premarket trading Monday, while Coach's stock was little changed.
"Kate Spade has a truly unique and differentiated brand positioning with a broad lifestyle assortment and strong awareness among consumers, especially millennials," Coach CEO Victor Luis said in the release.
Kate Spade has been under external pressure to do a deal since November, when the New York-based hedge fund Caerus Investors sent the company's board a letter pushing for a sale.
"We have become increasingly frustrated by management's inability to achieve profit margins comparable to industry peers," Caerus' founder, Ward Davis, and managing partner, Brian Agnew, wrote at the time.

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The Best Designer Bags to Buy Now and Sell Later

Designer handbags are expensive: This is a fact. And that many shoppers prefer to pay less than the original retail price for them is another. Fortunately, there are a lot of places to do that online.

Resale itself is a billion-dollar industry; the annual revenue is an estimated $17 billion, and the category of handbags is particularly lucrative. High-end consignment sites like The RealReal and Vestaire Collective are owning this space, and making it incredibly simple (and more secure) to shop for pre-owned designer bags online, with the same type of customer service experience you’d find at any other reputable e-commerce site. Secondhand shopping has come a long way in the past few years.

So what’s worth your investment? Here, we asked Graham Wetzbarger, The RealReal’s senior director of authentication, which bags you should consider buying now if you’re looking to resell later.

What are some of the most popular bags on The RealReal right now? What are people going crazy for, or showing an increased interest in?

There are always going to be some staples: the iconic brands that are always in fashion, both on the high end and on the low end. The biggest names are Chanel, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton. Those always have really high demand; they’re iconic, and because of their very high price point, people really seek them out on the secondary market.

Last year, Mansur Gavriel was huge, but now the bags sit for a few days. They still sell, but the sense of urgency is a little less than what it was. We’ve seen other brands come up and come down. Sometimes it has more to do with the silhouette and brands that cater to that silhouette. We’re seeing a big spike in Kate Spade right now, because they do a lot of really youthful and colorful bags. They also do tons of crossbody, just like Rebecca Minkoff. They’re an accessible price point, and the color palette is suited toward spring and summer. When people want a seasonal bag, they’re not going to go too expensive.

MCM is also really coming up. We’re seeing a customer who’s more street-style-driven than luxury Fifth-Avenue-driven, who’s loving cool sneakers and MCM backpacks and bags and baseball caps. Even some of these vintage MCM bags are doing really well.

What other shapes are big?

I think Lady bags — with a nice, sophisticated, gorgeous top handle — are back, and have been for a while. You see these from Delvaux, they’re gorgeous; Valextra has many that are stunning. And then the backpack is back, so hard. Everyone from Chanel to Mansur Gavriel and so many brands in between — everyone wants a backpack, and everyone is doing a backpack.

What are some of the best bags to buy now that’ll be worth the investment later on?

You can’t go wrong with Louis Vuitton monogram canvas. Not only is it very durable, but it holds its value, probably 70 percent of what you paid for it. And then when you consider the brand increases prices 10 percent every year, that’s a great ROI.

Something on the more entry-level price point is harder, because they tend to go on sale. Department stores will put things on sale seasonally, so you can get them retail at a lower price point. And there are just so many more of them made, so the secondary market gets a little bit flooded. You’re never going to get a really strong ROI on something like that — it needs to be slightly less approachable and more covetable than a mass brand. Finding those brands that don’t go on sale, have smaller production, and have bags that are very publicized are always going to have staying power.

Also, there are some silhouettes, even in Louis Vuitton, that wax and wane depending on what the house is doing now. These houses and these brands that have lots of history and deep archives are often pulling and resurrecting styles that have been out of production for a while, so that really has an influence and effect on the secondary market and on vintage items that are similar.

A close up of a pink Chanel bag and pink coat

How long should you hang onto a designer bag before selling it?

In general, I always say a year. If you keep your bag for a year, it’s still going to be in great shape and still relatively on trend. And if it does have some spin of seasonality to it, in a year you’ll be back in that same season as when you bought it.

Sometimes, we can feel a trend before the data shows it. About four or five months ago, we kept getting more and more Rockstud Pumps from Valentino every day. At first we were like, “Awesome!” and then we were like, “Wow,” and then we were like, “Uh oh...” The data always comes a month later. So intuitively, that means it’s time to clear your Rockstuds. When the data starts showing that their velocity has slowed down and they’re taking longer to sell and the selling price point has gone down as well, that’s the sign that this trend is over.

Just like with technology, being an early adopter always helps. Trust your instincts. If you see something and you like it, go for it. If you start seeing a lot of other people carrying it or that style being replicated by other designers, you know it’s at its peak, and that’s a great time to part with your goods — before the trend is over. It’s just over-saturation. Mansur launched the bucket bag and it was huge, and every other designer started doing a bucket bag. It was popular for a minute, and there are a ton out there. So while there aren’t as many Mansurs, there are a ton of other facsimiles. So it just slows down and kind of kills the trend.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Original here

Is the Kate Spade Handbag White or Blue?

Well, the internet is at it again! But this time it's a handbag. It all started with an innocent Twitter post that has gotten the attention of national news. The original post was on Wednesday in which she was immediately complimented on her 'nice white purse'.

Does this photo fool you? This is the Kate Spade handbag that has everyone scratching their heads and even has keen fashion spotters baffled with the question: Is the bag white or blue?

Many took part in the debate: