Archive | October, 2017

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Fashion Retailer Ascena Retail Group Is in Trouble

Ascena Retail Group Inc. recently released its 2017 annual report and the news wasn’t good.  Sales were off 4.9% from 2016 and all of its four reporting segments showed a decline year-over-year with plus and kids fashion off the most, both down 7.5%. In response to its failing fortunes in retail, it plans to close […]

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Coach Is Now Tapestry: Is a Name Change Enough to Change Its Fortunes?

Kraft became Mondelez, Google renamed itself Alphabet, Philip Morris was reborn as Altria and now Coach is Tapestry. Changing a company’s name is a really big deal, one fraught with peril of confusing customers by losing valuable brand awareness. Reporting in Fortune, Caroline Fairchild wrote: As corporations evolve their strategy, their brands can change too — for […]

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Donna Karan’s Defense of Weinstein: When People Do Bad Things To Good Brands

Donna Karan walked out onto the red carpet recently at the CinéFashion Film Awards in Los Angeles and immediately stepped in a big, stinking pile of it. When asked about the allegations of sexual misconduct by her friend Harvey Weinstein, she instinctively jumped to his defense: “We have to look at ourselves [and think], How […]

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Retail Apocalypse: How Bad Is It Really?

The Commerce Department recently updated its report on the economy for the second quarter.  The news was mixed.  The economy grew at a faster pace from April-June than it did from January-March 2017.  GDP expanded at a 3.1% annual rate in its third and final estimate, which was a marked improvement from the 1.2% rise […]

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Timberland’s Answer to the Retail Apocalyse

Timberland, the New England-based outdoor lifestyle brand owned by VF Corporation, has long been a trailblazer in fashion. Famous for its iconic yellow boot, designed by Timberland’s founder Nathan Swartz and introduced in 1973, Timberland initially became the work boot of choice for rugged outdoorsmen (and outdoorswomen in 1984) and blue-collar workers. Then in the 90s Timberland […]