OCTOBER 2002 Cover Story Features Global Outlets

Cover Story

Retail Innovators Rule
With a spate of retail bankruptcies, a weak economy and recent news that apparel sales hit a four-year low, retailers and developers can be forgiven for being in a bit of a funk. But innovation at many chains is making the picture brighter. VRN checks in with some outlet chains that are living proof that the byword of retail is change

• VF Factory Outlet, which helped create the outlet industry, begins its most rapid expansion in years after a study underscores the chain’s value to its parent company as the most profitable channel for liquidating excess goods.
• Le Gourmet Chef, thwarted by a lack of capital and continuing slow growth, hires a new CEO, revamps its management team and secures new funding from joint-venture partners. Next up: Expansion that will roughly double its store count by yearend 2003.
• Tommy Bahama, not even a decade old, begins opening stores in outlet centers, giving the industry a new, hot entry.
• Hathaway Shirts, which was poised this summer to be sold to an unusual buyer, opens its first outlet store in a market it left years ago: Freeport, Maine.
• Dickies, the workwear giant, tests a new outlet store design that takes industrial chic to new heights.
  
  

Features

Jewelry’s Allure
Despite the economic downturn and stock market collapse, consumer desire to buy jewelry, a key product category in the luxury products mix, is strong and growing, a new study concludes. In 2001, jewelry stores generated 54 percent of the market’s nearly $40 billion in sales and mass marketers increased their share.

Planned Outlet Projects
While only one new outlet center will open in 2002, 10 industry developers are standing by their plans to get 13 phase-1 projects up and running by spring 2004. Of these 13 centers, 11 are holdovers from a list of 16 that ran in the February 2002 VRN.

Outlet Center Expansions
Two-dozen planned outlet-center expansions - totaling more than 1 million sf of gross leasable area - are in the development hopper through 2004, including 22 scheduled for next year.

Fall Programs
Crisp air after a long, hot summer just has a way of loosening a person’s purse strings. It’s one of the more pleasant aspects of autumn, and industry marketing directors do their best to give shoppers a reason to choose their outlet centers over other retail venues.

Tanger Talks
The president and COO of Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, the only developer to open an outlet center this year, gives an interview with Wall Street Transcripts, an online publication.

Western Wonder
Catalog retailer Sierra Trading Post, founded in 1986 in Reno, Nev., with one employee in a 500-sf office, today operates a 150,000-sf facility that includes corporate offices, flagship store, and phone and fulfillment centers, plus three stores elsewhere.

Retail Biz
A look at the business doings of some of the industry’s chains: A Levi’s licensee closes 40 units; Jones acquires Esprit; Ann Taylor looking good.

Tenant Handbooks.com
Craig Realty Group publishes its tenant construction handbooks on its Web site, putting a wealth of information about its projects at retailers’ fingertips.

Guest Column
Phyllis Pescosolido explains how mail targeting can be improved even without turning to the power of a database.

VRN’s Fall Convention
The industry-planned VRN Fall Outlet Retail Convention that starts on the last day of September is shaping up to be a magical, educational, deal-making bonanza.

Giving Kids their Space
With a bang, Atlanta’s Discover Mills opens a new interactive play and educational area for kids.