NEW YORK — When times were good, retailers sold sundresses in February and heavy wool sweaters in August.
Now, Americans worried about the recession are buying only what they need today. This new frugality has merchants and suppliers overhauling every aspect of their businesses, from window displays to the fabrics they choose.
It’s changing some of the rules of retail.
Joan Danehy, a 63-year-old retired teacher from Cazenovia, N.Y., would always get a head start on spring, buying summer clothes for her grandchildren when it was still chilly in March. She would put her purchases aside and give out the items a few months later when the weather turned warm. This year, she passed by the colorful assortment at Lord & Taylor without buying.
“A year ago, I knew I was going to have money, but now, there is this feeling that you are going to need it for something else, paying a bill or buying tires,” said Danehy, whose retirement funds have lost half their value.
Consumers have long griped about merchandise being out of sync with the weather — lots of corduroy in the summer, for example. And while the industry had made some inroads in offering more timely fashions in recent years, it didn’t have much incentive to make big changes because shoppers kept buying. Retailers also liked getting items into stores early because the preseason sales helped them gauge how much to reorder.
The recession is forcing retailers to rewrite the rules. For one thing, the pullback by consumers has forced retailers to slash prices at an unprecedented rate to move merchandise.
That has destroyed profits. For the fourth quarter of 2008, retailers’ profits dropped 26.6 percent compared with a year earlier, said Ken Perkins, president of research company RetailMetrics LLC. First-quarter profits are forecast to be down almost 22 percent.
Department stores, which have been the worst offenders of jumping ahead of the season, are taking some cues from so-called fast-fashion rivals, said Michael Londrigan, chairman of the fashion merchandising department at the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising in Manhattan.
The strategy does require a big balancing act for stores: keeping the selling floor feeling new and fresh while keeping fashions in sync with the season.
K&G Fashion Superstore, a 100-plus-store division of Men’s Wearhouse Inc., plans to stock short-sleeve cotton pique shirts in sage green and other earth tones in August before shifting to a deeper hues like hunter green in September. In August last year, its stores were filled with long-sleeve rugby shirts in dark colors.
The “wear now” strategy also involves focusing even more on fabric innovations. Liz Claiborne Inc. plans to ship a shirtwaist dress under its namesake label this August in cotton fabric that looks like tweed, so it’s more suited to last through at least two seasons.
