So What, Who Cares (vol 3, issue 23) Why teenagers are making retail analysts panic
Hello!
I am still in the business of recommending Twitter feeds from awesome people, and I want to point you all to a feed from friends of mine:
@emojiheds turns headlines into their emoji translations, a service that will help us all become fluent in communicating solely via tiny graphics. They generally run the headline first, then a follow-up tweet in case you aren't conversant in chicken-arrow-bicep yet:
🐔🐔🐔➡️💪💪💪👨🏻??
— Emoji Headlines (@emojiheds) March 24, 2017
— Emoji Headlines (@emojiheds) March 24, 2017
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In the ongoing quest to figure out why Americans are just not shopping like they used to, the beady little eye of the retail analyst has turned to a new culprit: Teenagers. To be fair, the analysts' eyes are probably not very beady, but teenagers' apparent deviation from a two-generation norm of blowing their disposable income on clothing and shoes is now something being discussed in investor circles.
PiperJaffrey's biannual "Taking Stock of Teens" survey notes that teen spending is down year-over-year (most tellingly, parental contribution to teenager spending, i.e. the money parents put toward their kids' clothing and expenses, dropped from 68% of a teen's total consumer outlay to 63%. Parents are cutting back and kids are diverting their gotta-have-its from clothing to digital downloads (media and games) and food -- more social expenditures.
As a Business of Fashion op-ed warned of the results:
It's undeniable that this generation is spending less on clothing than their parents and could carry those frugal habits with them into adulthood. That could mean even lower customer traffic numbers and further declining sales at department stores and specialty retailers.
So what? Teenagers are generally a coveted consumer demographic because they are not yet brand-loyal, so there's time to sucker them into adopting a new brand. And they're in the sweet spot between "just began working" and "not yet paying off student loans," to the tune of an estimated $91 billion in annual purchasing power.
Also, teens are early adopters of a lot of new consumer technologies, and they can actually make or break a market by deciding whether or not to introduce the adults in their lives to a new tech. For example, teenagers aren't the ones who are deciding which hosted cloud provider your workplace is using -- but they are the ones who normalized cloud-based services as an element of everyday computing. Teens aren't the ones who have to write the BYOD policy for a workplace -- but they are the ones who normalized the cultural expectation that we can move seamlessly between work and personal tasks on one device.
A demographic that is known for an openness to new brands, discretionary income and early adoption of new product categories is one that most consumer-facing businesses want. What some businesses are struggling with now is how to attract the elusive teen consumer -- and what to do once the cultural tides shift among teens and you're no longer cool any more.
Who cares? Nearly anyone whose goal is to separate an American from her money.
The push to differentiate brands via experience is not new -- we've seen it with cosmetics stores, we're seeing it now with pop-up shops meant to amplify a brand that's primarily online only, we've seen subscription box services explode based on the premise that customers are paying for a pleasingly personal surprise collection of goodies, we've seen e-commerce retailers try to make the presentation of their packages part of the brand experience.
Since the idea is that teenagers will spend money on experiences that burnish their social currency, expect to see retailers try to trot out classes, meet-and-greets or social experiences for select shoppers (i.e. big spenders), hoping that the aura of exclusivity will rub off on kids who want behind the velvet rope.
According to a survey done by IBM and the National Retail Federation, teenagers prefer shopping in person but a majority find it incredibly boring -- "I left the house for this?" -- unless there is a fun or interesting experience attached to the act of finding and buying something. Think about how Nordstrom does brand launches as events -- free eats! Live music! In-store stylists to coo over your choices! You're not merely spending money, you're entertained by an experience that is a limited commodity, and therefore perceived as more desirable. American Eagle gets this and has recently launched in-store cafes with craft sodas. (Since the Piper Jaffrey survey found more teens spending money on snacks and food, this seems like a sensible diversification effort too.)
Teen brands don't live forever -- tell me the last time any Gen-X woman bought something from Esprit. But it will be interesting to see if these teenagers' shopping habits into the paying-student-loan years, and how that will reshape every other consumers' shopping experience.
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Your pop culture recommendation for the day: The Twin Peaks revival is going to hit Showtime next month, but honestly, after being trapped in an airport with Entertainment Weekly and its "Hey, Gen Xers! All the pop culture figures from your youth have aged -- and there are three covers showing the cruel march of time" approach to the show, all I wanted to do was revisit my favorite piece of Twin Peaks media ever: the Sassy magazine fashion spread that explicitly referenced the show.
Happily, there are some scans on it over on Dangerous Minds (I would wear that Log Lady ensemble today, tbh, and would totally Kickstarter a revival of Tweeds for that shirt alone), and as a bonus, a 1990 Movieline spread showing all the Twin Peaks actors at the apex of their youthful dishiness. As Daniel J. Blau once wrote of Dana Ashbrook for Television Without Pity (archives here), "The bones in his jawline can be seen from space" and the Movieline photos absolutely back up that contention.
Anyway, those pictures are a veritable smorgasbord of the liminal-nineties style where for ten glorious minutes we all wanted to look like Lady Miss Kier with psychedelic leggings and wide stretchy headbands.
Now let's all come back to 2017, follow Lady Miss Kier on Twitter, find a friend with Showtime to invite us over for the revival of Twin Peaks, and prep for it by watching Psych's "Dual Spires" episode, which is the millennial satire Twin Peaks deserved. You can find "Dual Spires" for sale on Amazon or iTunes, for about the price of a damn fine cup of coffee.
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