6 ms·

Retailers Ask: Where Did Teenagers Go?

30 points by mathattack 13y ago

mortov 13y ago
Where did they go ? Perhaps if retailers had been less keen to install The Mosquito (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito) to shoo them away, they may have had more customers. Sounds like retailers have discovered the downside to the constant anti-teenager policies of malls and shops treating them as hostile aliens to be driven off and sometimes even criminalized for being so "anti-social" as to try and go out shopping by themselves whilst under 21. No wonder they buy online or just decide to play online games instead of going out. At least there they are not going to be harassed by mall cops or arrested by real cops and criminalized.
- marquis 13y ago
  Also, jobs? When I was growing up teenagers were the mainstay of the supermarket bag&checkout for example - now I see older people having these jobs. Which probably means there isn't much lower to go in terms of income.
- mrjatx 13y ago
  I've never heard of this. Wikipedia had this about it, which is pretty hilarious; Some teenagers turned the sound into a mobile phone ringtone, which could not be heard by teachers if the phone rang during a class.[38] Mobile phone speakers are capable of producing frequencies above 20 kHz.[39] This ringtone became informally known as "Teen Buzz"[40] or "the Mosquito ringtone" and has since been sold commercially.
- VLM 13y ago
  "At least there they are not going to be harassed by mall cops ..." Ask the parents of those teens. I got harassed at the local mall as a quiet, well dressed biz-casual, heavily spending yuppie in my 20s by mall cops, I was speechless at the time, needless to say I'll never go there again, and I am not planning on letting my kids go there either. They went to great effort to prevent young people from spending money at the mall. It took awhile, but young people are now not spending money at the mall. I'm not seeing much of a problem. When it closes we can build a nice condo there. If they could just hurry up and close, so we could get on with progress...
chiph 13y ago
I'm a long way from shopping at one of the stores mentioned, but when I walk past them at the mall, what strikes me is how expensive they look. Not just the clothes, but the store itself. Expensive locations, expensive build-out, expensive fixtures. Lots of employees. I don't expect them to look like a discount merchanter (naked fluorescent bulbs, racks from last century), but there's something to be said about cheap chic. Which Forever21 (a favorite of the nieces) and H&M seem to get.
- bluedino 13y ago
  The build-out costs are probably offset by how low mall rent is these days. You could take the same idea when it comes to food, look at how many flat screen televisions are inside a B-dubs or how much more it probably costs to built a Chipotle or Panera than it does a Subway. No wonder a meal at the previous two costs $10+, and Chipotle is considering raising prices because sales are so high. But the million dollars it costs to build the restaurant over 5 years is probably a drop in the bucket compared to food and employee costs.
ja27 13y ago
“You can buy a plaid shirt at Abercrombie that’s like $70,” said Daniela Donayre, 17, standing in a Topshop in Manhattan. “Or I can go to Forever 21 and buy the same shirt for $20.” Or they can go to a thrift shop and get one for $2. That's what my daughter and half her friends do. It's even worse after that Macklemore song.
- sentenza 13y ago
  That's probably the point. Clothing is a less relevant competitor for the scarce financial resources of teenagers than it used to be. So where did the teenagers go? Apple store.
  - nswanberg 13y ago
    http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/12/06/how-much-do-teenagers-love-the-iphone/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/12/06/how-much-do-te...
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Not a very useful story. Odds that the 16-yo cousin thought Phil was joking about the plaque: 100% (Odds that Phil was actually joking about the plaque: unknown)
- ck2 13y ago
  Ah see this wasn't in the article, glad to read thrift stores are cool again.
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    People are so damn silly. "Hey, celebrities are buying overpriced things. Let's buy overpriced things and make fun of those who bought the same thing for less!" ... "Hey, a musician sang a song about getting stuff cheap at the thrift store. Let's get all our stuff at the thrift store now! It's the same stuff, for cheaper!"
mrjatx 13y ago
Clothing seems far less about pimping your brand and more about wearing good looking, well-fit items nowadays. It's great. When I was in high school around 2000 I was a skinny kid. I couldn't find ANYTHING that fit well except for Diesel. Everything else was sized via the "fat American" standard where a small would be a medium nowadays. Now there are tons of places to get well fit affordable stuff. Uniqlo, AA, H&M, Forever21, etc.
- bluedino 13y ago
  On the other hand, I gained 50lbs from when I was a 'skinny kid' in high school and nothing at Abercrombie even fits.
  - cliveowen 13y ago
    Abercrombie is for 19-21 years, so it doesn't even matter in the long run.
    - bluedino 13y ago
      I see too many guys in their late 30's and early 40's wearing it these days, so I figured it was long past 'cool'.
ck2 13y ago
Was hoping to read that maybe thrift stores are coming back. Guess they are not "cool" again yet.
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  There was recently a commercially produced pop song about thrift stores in the charts, so you can rest assured that they've been cool again for at least ten years.
  - antiterra 13y ago
    I'd argue that it was independently produced, and 'cool' varies by the crowds you grow up in and around. Commercial music is still considered cool by a very large swath of youth. Even when it wasn't, the industry has little problem absorbing and subverting the indies.
    - JonnieCache 13y ago
      I'm not saying they're no longer cool, but the fact that some record company executives put millions of dollars behind the track in this risk-averse entertainment/identity industry means thrift stores have probably passed or are about to pass their peak coolness for this cycle. The same likely applies to Macklemore themselves, they didn't write those lyrics with blood and tears, they wrote them to sell. "They" watch what the really cool kids are doing, or at least the coolest kids they can find. When they've been consistently doing a particular thing for almost a decade, with the thing filtering down through the social hierarchy until almost-uncool people are doing it, that's the prime time to safely monetize the shit out of that thing for about 3 years until even your dad wouldn't be caught dead doing it. Macklemore/ADA are kinda late to the party, "vintage" clothing stores have been milking that particular cash cow dry for a while now. Filtering down... It's a process that sounds familiar to many people here, I'm sure.
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        "Some record company executives"? Thrift Shop was produced under the label Macklemore LLC, i.e. bankrolled by Macklemore himself. That was one of the reasons it was an interesting track. An indy label hitting the #1 spot on the charts.
yardie 13y ago
You chased them away and now you're shocked they aren't in your store? Check the Apple Store. They have ~10 products that change once a year. The former VP was smart enough to know that todays' kids are tomorrows' customers. They might not buy anything on the first or fourth visit but they'll eventually buy something.
protonfish 13y ago
How is it a surprise that with high unemployment and low wages retail markets are suffering? Corporations' focus on short-term profits have predictable consequences.
jonnathanson 13y ago
These days, B&M retail stores that hope to survive need to rely on creative layouts, exciting experiences, or extreme price/value ratios. A lot of folks are mentioning the Apple stores, which I'd certainly describe as creative and exciting. The article references H&M, which is more of a price/value play. Uniqlo probably touches on all of these things, though from anecdotal observation, it tends to skew a little older than teenagers. But have you ever been inside a Uniqlo that wasn't as packed and chaotic as a Disneyland ride? Say what you will about the shopping experience, but it's a pretty successful one. You wait in line for about 2 hours…but that's because there's an enormous line in the first place.
justincormack 13y ago
The successful fashion retailers are doing fast iteration, like Zara as shown in this rather good article [1] - sounds like many are just getting complacent with their brand. "That means that if Inditex stores in London, Tokyo and São Paulo all have customers responding enthusiastically to, let’s say, sequined cranberry-colored hot pants, Inditex can deliver more of these, or a variation on hot pants, sequins or that cranberry color, to stores within three weeks. The company tries to keep the stock fresh; one promise its stores make is that you will always be buying something nearly unique. Merchandise moves incredibly quickly, even by fast-fashion standards. All those thousands of Inditex stores receive deliveries of new clothes twice a week." [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/magazine/how-zara-grew-into-the-worlds-largest-fashion-retailer.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/magazine/how-zara-grew-int...
minikites 13y ago
"Municipalities crafted anti-loitering laws and curfews to keep young people from congregating alone. New neighborhoods had fewer public spaces. Crime rates plummeted, but moral panic soared." http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/ http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/
- josefresco 13y ago
  While this is an important and valid general concern, the article was specifically talking about only a few teen brands that up until very recently were doing quite well. I don't see any general trend or problem with teen purchasing, only a handful of dinosaurs about to be left behind by newer more agile competitors. That and it's a new game console year which probably puts dent on expendable teenage income.
thecosas 13y ago
Most important two paragraphs in this article: >> “Probably the most important thing a teenage boy has is his smartphone,” said Richard Jaffe, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “Second, is probably his sneakers. Third, maybe, we get to his jeans.” >> What may trump all of those, Mr. Jaffe said, are gaming systems, especially over the last few months, because Xbox and PlayStation both released new game consoles in 2013. That may have taken a bite out of what teenagers had to spend on clothes.
sakunthala 13y ago
The article briefly mentions it, but I think the comments here are underestimating how much teenagers like to shop online. The growth of Nasty Gal may be one example of this. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/technology/nasty-gal-an-online-start-up-is-a-fast-growing-retailer.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/technology/nasty-gal-an-on...
resemc 13y ago
Ludicrous. Where did the teenagers go? Away from your retail store where they're not wanted (unless they're working minimum wage in your employ). For the past 10 or so years I've heard nothing but stories about troublesome teenagers in stores/malls, shoplifting flash mobs made of 'urban yoots', etc. They've gone so far as to make electronic buzzers that only the young can hear and they use them to drive the kids away (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito). When you've spent the better part of a decade labeling teens with anti-social labels and actively driving them away with noise maybe you shouldn't ask why all the teens left (and took their money with them).

30 points by mathattack 13y ago

Where did they go ? Perhaps if retailers had been less keen to install The Mosquito (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito) to shoo them away, they may have had more customers. Sounds like retailers have discovered the downside to the constant anti-teenager policies of malls and shops treating them as hostile aliens to be driven off and sometimes even criminalized for being so "anti-social" as to try and go out shopping by themselves whilst under 21. No wonder they buy online or just decide to play online games instead of going out. At least there they are not going to be harassed by mall cops or arrested by real cops and criminalized.

marquis 13y ago
Also, jobs? When I was growing up teenagers were the mainstay of the supermarket bag&checkout for example - now I see older people having these jobs. Which probably means there isn't much lower to go in terms of income.
mrjatx 13y ago
I've never heard of this. Wikipedia had this about it, which is pretty hilarious; Some teenagers turned the sound into a mobile phone ringtone, which could not be heard by teachers if the phone rang during a class.[38] Mobile phone speakers are capable of producing frequencies above 20 kHz.[39] This ringtone became informally known as "Teen Buzz"[40] or "the Mosquito ringtone" and has since been sold commercially.
VLM 13y ago
"At least there they are not going to be harassed by mall cops ..." Ask the parents of those teens. I got harassed at the local mall as a quiet, well dressed biz-casual, heavily spending yuppie in my 20s by mall cops, I was speechless at the time, needless to say I'll never go there again, and I am not planning on letting my kids go there either. They went to great effort to prevent young people from spending money at the mall. It took awhile, but young people are now not spending money at the mall. I'm not seeing much of a problem. When it closes we can build a nice condo there. If they could just hurry up and close, so we could get on with progress...

chiph 13y ago

I'm a long way from shopping at one of the stores mentioned, but when I walk past them at the mall, what strikes me is how expensive they look. Not just the clothes, but the store itself. Expensive locations, expensive build-out, expensive fixtures. Lots of employees. I don't expect them to look like a discount merchanter (naked fluorescent bulbs, racks from last century), but there's something to be said about cheap chic. Which Forever21 (a favorite of the nieces) and H&M seem to get.

bluedino 13y ago
The build-out costs are probably offset by how low mall rent is these days. You could take the same idea when it comes to food, look at how many flat screen televisions are inside a B-dubs or how much more it probably costs to built a Chipotle or Panera than it does a Subway. No wonder a meal at the previous two costs $10+, and Chipotle is considering raising prices because sales are so high. But the million dollars it costs to build the restaurant over 5 years is probably a drop in the bucket compared to food and employee costs.

ja27 13y ago

“You can buy a plaid shirt at Abercrombie that’s like $70,” said Daniela Donayre, 17, standing in a Topshop in Manhattan. “Or I can go to Forever 21 and buy the same shirt for $20.” Or they can go to a thrift shop and get one for $2. That's what my daughter and half her friends do. It's even worse after that Macklemore song.

sentenza 13y ago
That's probably the point. Clothing is a less relevant competitor for the scarce financial resources of teenagers than it used to be. So where did the teenagers go? Apple store.
- nswanberg 13y ago
  http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/12/06/how-much-do-teenagers-love-the-iphone/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/12/06/how-much-do-te...
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Not a very useful story. Odds that the 16-yo cousin thought Phil was joking about the plaque: 100% (Odds that Phil was actually joking about the plaque: unknown)
ck2 13y ago
Ah see this wasn't in the article, glad to read thrift stores are cool again.
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  People are so damn silly. "Hey, celebrities are buying overpriced things. Let's buy overpriced things and make fun of those who bought the same thing for less!" ... "Hey, a musician sang a song about getting stuff cheap at the thrift store. Let's get all our stuff at the thrift store now! It's the same stuff, for cheaper!"

mrjatx 13y ago

Clothing seems far less about pimping your brand and more about wearing good looking, well-fit items nowadays. It's great. When I was in high school around 2000 I was a skinny kid. I couldn't find ANYTHING that fit well except for Diesel. Everything else was sized via the "fat American" standard where a small would be a medium nowadays. Now there are tons of places to get well fit affordable stuff. Uniqlo, AA, H&M, Forever21, etc.

bluedino 13y ago
On the other hand, I gained 50lbs from when I was a 'skinny kid' in high school and nothing at Abercrombie even fits.
- cliveowen 13y ago
  Abercrombie is for 19-21 years, so it doesn't even matter in the long run.
  - bluedino 13y ago
    I see too many guys in their late 30's and early 40's wearing it these days, so I figured it was long past 'cool'.

ck2 13y ago

Was hoping to read that maybe thrift stores are coming back. Guess they are not "cool" again yet.

JonnieCache 13y ago
There was recently a commercially produced pop song about thrift stores in the charts, so you can rest assured that they've been cool again for at least ten years.
- antiterra 13y ago
  I'd argue that it was independently produced, and 'cool' varies by the crowds you grow up in and around. Commercial music is still considered cool by a very large swath of youth. Even when it wasn't, the industry has little problem absorbing and subverting the indies.
  - JonnieCache 13y ago
    I'm not saying they're no longer cool, but the fact that some record company executives put millions of dollars behind the track in this risk-averse entertainment/identity industry means thrift stores have probably passed or are about to pass their peak coolness for this cycle. The same likely applies to Macklemore themselves, they didn't write those lyrics with blood and tears, they wrote them to sell. "They" watch what the really cool kids are doing, or at least the coolest kids they can find. When they've been consistently doing a particular thing for almost a decade, with the thing filtering down through the social hierarchy until almost-uncool people are doing it, that's the prime time to safely monetize the shit out of that thing for about 3 years until even your dad wouldn't be caught dead doing it. Macklemore/ADA are kinda late to the party, "vintage" clothing stores have been milking that particular cash cow dry for a while now. Filtering down... It's a process that sounds familiar to many people here, I'm sure.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      "Some record company executives"? Thrift Shop was produced under the label Macklemore LLC, i.e. bankrolled by Macklemore himself. That was one of the reasons it was an interesting track. An indy label hitting the #1 spot on the charts.

yardie 13y ago

You chased them away and now you're shocked they aren't in your store? Check the Apple Store. They have ~10 products that change once a year. The former VP was smart enough to know that todays' kids are tomorrows' customers. They might not buy anything on the first or fourth visit but they'll eventually buy something.

protonfish 13y ago

How is it a surprise that with high unemployment and low wages retail markets are suffering? Corporations' focus on short-term profits have predictable consequences.

jonnathanson 13y ago

These days, B&M retail stores that hope to survive need to rely on creative layouts, exciting experiences, or extreme price/value ratios. A lot of folks are mentioning the Apple stores, which I'd certainly describe as creative and exciting. The article references H&M, which is more of a price/value play. Uniqlo probably touches on all of these things, though from anecdotal observation, it tends to skew a little older than teenagers. But have you ever been inside a Uniqlo that wasn't as packed and chaotic as a Disneyland ride? Say what you will about the shopping experience, but it's a pretty successful one. You wait in line for about 2 hours…but that's because there's an enormous line in the first place.

justincormack 13y ago

The successful fashion retailers are doing fast iteration, like Zara as shown in this rather good article [1] - sounds like many are just getting complacent with their brand. "That means that if Inditex stores in London, Tokyo and São Paulo all have customers responding enthusiastically to, let’s say, sequined cranberry-colored hot pants, Inditex can deliver more of these, or a variation on hot pants, sequins or that cranberry color, to stores within three weeks. The company tries to keep the stock fresh; one promise its stores make is that you will always be buying something nearly unique. Merchandise moves incredibly quickly, even by fast-fashion standards. All those thousands of Inditex stores receive deliveries of new clothes twice a week." [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/magazine/how-zara-grew-into-the-worlds-largest-fashion-retailer.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/magazine/how-zara-grew-int...

minikites 13y ago

"Municipalities crafted anti-loitering laws and curfews to keep young people from congregating alone. New neighborhoods had fewer public spaces. Crime rates plummeted, but moral panic soared." http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/ http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/

josefresco 13y ago
While this is an important and valid general concern, the article was specifically talking about only a few teen brands that up until very recently were doing quite well. I don't see any general trend or problem with teen purchasing, only a handful of dinosaurs about to be left behind by newer more agile competitors. That and it's a new game console year which probably puts dent on expendable teenage income.

thecosas 13y ago

Most important two paragraphs in this article: >> “Probably the most important thing a teenage boy has is his smartphone,” said Richard Jaffe, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “Second, is probably his sneakers. Third, maybe, we get to his jeans.” >> What may trump all of those, Mr. Jaffe said, are gaming systems, especially over the last few months, because Xbox and PlayStation both released new game consoles in 2013. That may have taken a bite out of what teenagers had to spend on clothes.

sakunthala 13y ago

The article briefly mentions it, but I think the comments here are underestimating how much teenagers like to shop online. The growth of Nasty Gal may be one example of this. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/technology/nasty-gal-an-online-start-up-is-a-fast-growing-retailer.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/technology/nasty-gal-an-on...

resemc 13y ago

Ludicrous. Where did the teenagers go? Away from your retail store where they're not wanted (unless they're working minimum wage in your employ). For the past 10 or so years I've heard nothing but stories about troublesome teenagers in stores/malls, shoplifting flash mobs made of 'urban yoots', etc. They've gone so far as to make electronic buzzers that only the young can hear and they use them to drive the kids away (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito). When you've spent the better part of a decade labeling teens with anti-social labels and actively driving them away with noise maybe you shouldn't ask why all the teens left (and took their money with them).