Wet Seal started as a bikini shack in Newport Beach, CA in 1962. By the mid 1980’s they were known for offering trendy clothes to the most fashionable customers in
Orange County. Wet Seal sold the right merchandise at the right time, and by 1995 they had enough capitol to buy 237 Contempo Casual stores from the Neiman Marcus Group. When Wet Seal went public in 1996 they realized they needed a marketplace for 20-35 year old females with a more contemporary look. With that thought, then CEO,
Kathy Bronstein, created Arden B. The venue was named after her daughter. Also in 2001,
Wet Seal Inc., felt the need for a venue just for the “tween market,” girls five to 12 years old. They bought out 18 Zutopia store units from Gymboree, Inc. The store also expanded in 2001 by buying a majority of the Contempo Casual stores, and later merged web sites with
Contempo Casuals that created one of the largest junior driven sites in the country.
As like every retail organization, Wet Seal Inc., has seen the best and worst during their years in business. With the 9/11 tragedy and other natural disasters, the nation’s economy had seen better days. Wet Seal Inc. stuck it out with Kathy Bronstein behind the wheel, and in late 2001 sales increased into the double digits, and stock was up 61% for the year. A vendor partner stated, “ She’s one of the greatest merchants I know in the industry...she lives, eats, and breathes this junior business.”
After two years of plummeting sales, and comments that they’ve “lost touch with the thrifty, fashion obsessed teens,” Wet Seal Inc. hired a new chief executive, Peter Whitford. Peter Whitford was the former president of Walt Disney’s Disney Store operations. He also brought a talented team with him that included fashion designer, Victor Alfaro, and a teen-marketing expert, Anne Kallin Zehren. To get good output for their new line, Zehren came up with an idea to hire 11 stylizers to speak freely about Wet Seal fashions. “We’re having fashionable teens help us out,” Zehren states, and also adding that she hoped to recruit 50 stylizers by the end of the year. The stylizers are supposed to appear in ads, and add more appeal to the new clothing line.
Marketing experts agreed with the idea of hiring every day girls as fashion muses, but they also stated that Wet Seal has to be really committed to this new idea.
Charlotte Russe was founded in 1975 under the Lawrence Merchandising Corporation. The first Charlotte Russe was first opened in Carlsbad, California, while being named after a desert that the Lawrence brothers remembered from their childhood.
^ Scardino, Emily. Foot Locker acquires Footaction Stores to step up growth, DSN Retailing Today, May 3, 2004
Berry, Hannah. “The Fashion Industry: Free to Be an Individual.” The Norton Field Guide to
We seek to make a strong connection to young plus-size women and build our Torrid brand through our fashion forward marketing message. To support this, we advertise in premier fashion magazines with national distribution. We also conduct activities to increase awareness of and interest in our brand, our mission and our objectives, such as local and regional “model search” contests, where we solicit involvement of our existing customers and future customers.
As McKevitt claims, brands need people who have the ability to develop
(Gladwell, 1997). The simplicity of the advertisements was accentuated as to not to deter possible customers by creating a fashion based ad because, based on Gladwell’s multiple interviews of advertising experts, males shy away from being viewed as fashion forward or “trying to hard” (Gladwell, 1997). Wanting to test this theory, Gladwell analyzed multiple other advertising campaigns based on the same concept; men respond well to the idea of accidentally looking fashionable or falling into the currents trends. While analyzing other advertisements provided Gladwell’s theory of the Dockers’ campaign more plausible, due to the fact that the multiple advertisements were not addressed in the introduction to the paper, to the close reader the paper seems unfocused and full of tangents. Gladwell analyzed the Dockers’ campaign in paragraphs 1-14, 29-37, while the other paragraphs were focused on advertisements ranging from other male fashion campaigns to bottled water advertiseme... ...
With African Americans being apart of the fashion industry, they faced many hardships. However, they created a distinctive voice in the history of fashion. Throughout the early twentieth century, Blacks designers influenced the fashion industry in America, having, “a system and structure for maintaining their particular type of fashion.” African American fashion was very popular and caught the attention from the media. Department stores held successful fashion shows, screened fashion movies, and staged fashion pageants. Fortunately, African Americans were allowed to attend these events, yet they were not welcomed. Fast-forward to today, the fashion industry has opened up several doors for African American designers, stylist, and models. However,
Proctor and Gamble was founded in Cincinnati, OH, by William Proctor and James Gamble in 1837. Initially the company was started to compete with the 14 other soap and candle makers already established in Cincinnati, but around the end of the century, Proctor and Gamble dropped candle manufacturing altogether to focus on soap production. By 1890, Proctor and Gamble had increased their production to over 30 different types of soap.
In 2002, CEO of Levi Strauss, Phil Marineau was faced with a tough decision: whether he should sell product at Wal-Mart. In the last five years, Levi-Strauss had lost sales and had to close US plants to move production to cheaper offshore areas. Levi's really needed to revive the brand image to gain back some lost sales and was using marketing to create new advertisements and product placement to broaden their target market. Levi's had tough competition on every level of the price-point spectrum, whether it be high end retailers like Diesel or Calvin Klein, middle vertically integrated retailers like Gap or American Eagles, and on the bottom, private-label brands like Wal-Mart and Target.
Management experience will also play a large role in the success of the forecast. The current team is quite new and will gain some needed experience over the next year in the hopes of staying on track for success. The ability of management to ensure product is readily available for the client, their training techniques with new and seasoned associates, and general management style will ensure success or spell defeat for the store.
On July, 2nd 1962, Sam Walton realized a dream when he opened the first Walmart location in Rogers, Arkansas (Rowell, 2016). The concept behind the store was simple, “The Lowest Prices Anytime, Anywhere” (“Our History”, 2016). Within the first ten years of opening its first location, Walmart had become an incorporated company, opened 23 additional locations, and was publicly traded on the NYSE (“Our History,” 2016).
In a world where young people are only living for themselves, the corporations and brands are booming. Having expensive clothes, the newest phone and an overpriced cocktail in your hand on a weeknight has never been so important. This is the essence of youth, going to parties to show off your brand new purchases, buying a whole new wardrobe for your one week holiday to Ibiza. Major fashion brands have caught on to this and youth culture has began to feature heavily in campaigns.
Lock, Simon. “Rewiring Fashion Week” The Business of Fashion. N.P., 27 September 2013. Web. 21 October 2013
Rubbermaid’s strategy included consolidating manufacturing and standardizing processes and software among the newly acquired businesses to adhere to one way of operating and doing business. In addition, Rubbermaid also reorganized its internal structure into two different divisions, the newly acquired businesses all grouped together. Rubbermaid faced many challenges following the acquisition of the companies and in carrying out its strategic vision for dominating the commercial play market. The two major problems the company faced were a lack of communication across units and failing to realize that changing the way already successful businesses operate could be extremely detrimental. The strategic initiatives the company laid out were not properly commu...
or even for a clothing line that is majorly made for tweens or teenage girls. What teenage girl