December 23, 2006
In Shirt-Sleeve Holiday Season, Overcoats Linger on the Racks
By MICHAEL BARBARO
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/business/23warm.html?ei=5065&en=874c9936c0f905f5&ex=1167454800&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print
Retailers are calling it the Coat Crisis of 2006, a fashion fiasco
measured in racks of unsold fur-lined shearlings at Saks Fifth Avenue
and down puffer jackets at Bloomingdale’s.
Balmy temperatures on the East Coast, with average highs this holiday
season 15 degrees warmer than last year, have been disastrous for
sales of all kinds of cold-weather clothing, from cashmere caps to
wool scarves.
What seemed like a meteorological aberration — the coatless, hatless,
gloveless morning commute in Washington, New York and Boston — is
starting to feel like the new normal, encouraging consumers to splurge
on a flat-screen television instead of a peacoat.
The glut of winter wear has sent a chill through the executive suites
of major retailers, who count on big profits from coats in the crucial
holiday shopping season. They are even starting to grumble about the
first “global warming Christmas.”
So like farmers praying for rain, merchants have begun scanning
weather forecasts, hoping for a sudden drop in temperature to lift
their sales.
“At first, you start to chuckle in the morning when it’s 50 degrees,
then you start to snicker and then you start to curse,” said Rick
Weinstein, director of sales and marketing at Searle, a Manhattan
retailer that supplies coats to high-end department stores.
A few days before Christmas, temperatures remained in the mid-40s from
Maryland to Maine. Alex Grossman, a 33-year-old New York City
resident, buys a new winter coat every holiday season, waiting until
the first cold snap. This year, it did not come.
“Now it’s so late in the season I won’t even buy one,” he said,
standing sans coat in Midtown Manhattan Thursday afternoon as
temperatures reached 45 degrees.
The NPD Group, a retail research firm, predicts that sales of
outerwear will plunge at least 20 percent this holiday season,
compared with last year, with the not-winter-like weather to blame.
Retailers will not report holiday sales figures until January, but
there are clear signs of trouble. Even apparel executives, generally
an optimistic group, are acknowledging there is a problem.
“It’s a fact of life: you need cold weather to sell cold-weather
products,” said Barry Kay, co-president of Herman Kay, a Seventh
Avenue clothing company that supplies coats to department stores like
Macy’s and J. C. Penney. The season, he said, “has been very tough.”
“I am still running in shorts,” Mr. Kay said of his morning jogs
through Central Park. “That is not a good thing.”
Across the Northeast, the average high temperature since Dec. 1 has
been 47 degrees, compared with 32 degrees during the period in 2005,
according to Planalytics, which tracks weather for retailers.
In the metropolitan New York area, a retail mecca, the average high
for the month of December has been 14 degrees warmer than in 2005 — 52
degrees, compared with 38 degrees, making this December the warmest
since 2001.
This December may feel especially warm next to last year’s, which was
the coldest in a decade for New York and the entire Northeast,
according to Planalytics.
High temperatures, which the firm tracks, have a strong influence on
purchasing patterns, because they typically occur during the afternoon
— which is a peak shopping time of the day.
But warm weather is not the only obstacle this year to selling heavy
winter coats, scarves and gloves. Several seasons ago, consumers
starting wearing more layers, stacking corduroy blazers over cashmere
sweaters over collared shirts over long-sleeve T-shirts — rendering
heavy coats unnecessary in all but the coldest weather.
At the same time, millions of Americans are buying gift cards for
friends and family members, rather than cashmere overcoats and down
vests. By the time many people get around to cashing in their gift
cards, jackets may be out of season.
“It’s a triple whammy,” said John D. Morris, senior retail analyst at
Wachovia Securities, who tracks sales at mall stores. “Retailers are
getting caught with their pants down — and their coats off.”
So from popularly priced chains like Gap to high-end stores like
Barneys, retailers are slashing prices, with the coat department
transformed into a sea of sale signs.
Bloomingdale’s has marked down coats by 30 percent, while dangling
$100 off deals on the purchase of two or more. Express is offering 30
percent off hats, scarves and gloves. Gap is offering up to 50 percent
off winter clothing — with a faux fur-trimmed parka, regularly $169,
now just $68.
Retailers typically reserve such steep discounts for the week after
Christmas, not the week before. “Those are very giftable items,” Mr.
Morris said, “exactly what people should be buying right now even
without a markdown.”
Nobody is feeling the heat more than furriers, whose minks and sables
have never felt less seasonal.
Chris Spyropoulos, chief executive of BC International, which makes
fur coats for Bloomingdale’s and Saks, said the company had taken
bigger markdowns than originally planned because of the warm weather —
a concession few luxury companies, ever want to make.
Lighter-weight furs, like sheared minks, are still selling well, he
said, but “that is not enough to make our numbers.”
Many consumers are still buying heavy winter coats, even in cities
where temperatures are hovering around 50 degrees, and choosing to
sweat in the name of fashion.
“I am very warm,” whispered Alexandra Derrick, ensconced in a
full-length mink coat on the East Side of Manhattan, “but I love this
coat.”
Her daughter, Rosemarie, 25, was sweat-free. She has worn a long
sweater coat throughout November and December. “I never thought it
would get me this far through the year,” she said, “but it somehow
has.”
Even if temperatures remain unusually warm, the season is unlikely to
become a total washout for retailers. Michael Fink, head of women’s
fashion at Saks, said that even in warm seasons like this one, “The
key fashion coats sell no matter what.”
“It’s not about warmth,” he said, “it’s about want.”
The real worry is that this holiday season will not be an anomaly.
Retailers and clothing designers are generally the last to weigh in on
scientific debates, but some fear that they are seeing hints of global
warming.
“The warm weather this season is really bringing it home,” said Dana
Buchman, who creates women’s clothing for high-end department stores
“What is scary is that people are saying it’s nice. It’s not good
news. It’s scary.”
Scientists are less sure. While they have concluded that the global
climate is warming because of trapped greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, extremes in any one season cannot be firmly linked to an
underlying trend.
Even so, the thermometer hit 46 degrees yesterday, and Santa — or at
least the guy who plays him near Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan — shed
his layers.
To keep warm as he raises money for Volunteers of America, Lamont
Brothers, 36, usually wears thermal underwear and sweats beneath his
red-and-white costume.
This year, his protection from the cold is a pair of jeans and a light
sweater. “It’s not cold enough for layers,” he said. “The whole season
has been pushed back four months.”
--
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
"There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to
whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is
impossible." -- Jack Vance
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
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