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 Its Sales in a Funk,Gap Makes Big Bet...(zt) |
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ceo/cfo
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作者：ceo/cfo 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
I think Gap will be a takeover candidate.
Retailer Seeks Homier Feel
As Shoppers Embrace
More Individual Styles
Inspired by NASA and the Pub
By AMY MERRICK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 6, 2006； Page A1
DENVER －－ The Gap retail chain has cut costs, shaken up management and trimmed debt. But it's still stuck in a sales slump that has lasted for more than a year.
Now, it's betting that a radical plan to redesign its spartan stores will help win back shoppers. On the way out are the blond-wood floors, harsh lighting and acres of white wallboard covered in giant ads that helped the chain become a clothing juggernaut in the 1990s. The new Gap is going to be less SoHo loft and more neighborhood Starbucks.
At the remodeled Gap store at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center here, shoppers relax on a brown leather couch, next to a coffee table strewn with magazines and local newspapers such as the Denver Post. Store employees fill out signs by hand, in chalk, indicating different styles of jeans. In the new fitting rooms, customers trying on clothes have their names scratched on chalkboards on the doors.
By trying to cut itself down to a friendly, approachable size, Gap is wrestling with a problem faced by many big retailers. It wants the brand-name familiarity and economies of scale that chain stores enjoy. But it also wants to connect to customers who increasingly want to put their own idiosyncratic stamp on what they buy. They concoct their own ice-cream flavors, mix and match wardrobes from Internet boutiques and load personal soundtracks onto their iPods.
"How do you get customers to say, 'That's my Gap'?" says Christopher Hufnagel, vice president of "brand store experience" for the Gap chain.
Pressure is growing on Gap's parent, Gap Inc., and Chief Executive Paul Pressler, who came to the retailer three years ago from Walt Disney Co. The company has slashed its earnings forecast twice in the past six months and now expects per-share net income for 2005 to lag behind the previous year's. Executive turnover, particularly at the Gap brand, has been swift. The company's stock ｄｒｏｐped nearly 16% last year, and some analysts have expressed impatience with Mr. Pressler's strategies.
More bad news came yesterday. The company said that total sales for all of its brands fell 5% last month and are off 2% so far in the fiscal year ending Jan. 28. (See related article.) Overall sales at stores open at least a year fell 9% last month, the company's 13th decline in same-store sales in 14 months. Although the company's Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic brands all are troubled, the problems at the original Gap brand seem most vexing. At Gap stores, same-store sales for December were down 10%.
Bland, safe styles have been a big part of Gap's problem. Last spring and summer, Gap offered tank tops and T-shirts in dull, muddy colors and stocked up on khakis while competitors such as Abercrombie & Fitch Co. were selling lots of ripped, embroidered and embellished jeans. Gap's fall attire continued to bore a lot of customers.
Meanwhile, Gap has had to deal with a longer-term shift: The classic, casual styles it produces are easily copied and now are sold at a multitude of chains, from discounters such as Target Corp. to warehouse clubs such as Costco Wholesale Corp.
Improving Styles
Executives say they're working hard to improve the styles. They plan to use brighter, more optimistic colors and stock more signature items such as pocket T-shirts, puffy nylon vests and wool sweaters.
But they're working just as hard on the stores. Instead of holing up in a conference room, a team went on a whirlwind, world-wide tour to find new, creative ideas to adapt for the Gap chain.
At an investor conference in June, Mr. Pressler said customers were spending more time in its seven remodeled Denver stores and using the fitting rooms more often. He also said the value of the average purchase was strong. Since then, Gap hasn't given further details but says it plans to use the stores as a template for renovating the chain's 1,400 U.S. stores over the next several years.
Like other chains, Gap has gained advantages from having look-alike stores, saving time and money by placing bulk orders with suppliers for everything from denim fabric to sales racks. Time-starved customers also like knowing that no matter which Gap store they walk into, the merchandise will be relatively the same.
One of Gap's remodeled Denver stores, with dark wood floors and painted walls.
But as technology has improved in the past few years, stores have been able to add some variation without losing much efficiency. For example, retailers now can tailor the numbers of large and small sizes they ship to each store, using computer software that analyzes sales data.
"We're always going to look for those creative ideas to make any individual store special," Mr. Pressler says in an interview. He adds that it's also important for Gap to have a consistent image. "That's what consumers expect. The stores are virtually the same across the country."
Founded in 1969 by Donald G. Fisher, Gap began as a seller of Levi's and later started stocking its own designs. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the retailer gained a huge following with its simple, well-cut clothes. In the late 1990s, Gap expanded rapidly in response to the shift toward more casual dress at work.
But sales began a long slump around 2000 as Gap first chased after teenagers, then overreacted and stocked bland beige clothes when its edgy fashions flopped. Its debt mounted alarmingly.
In September 2002, Mr. Pressler was brought in from Disney, where he managed its theme parks and ran the trinket-stuffed Disney stores. Gap's credit rating had fallen to "junk" status and it was struggling to reclaim customers. Mr. Pressler slashed costs, brought in new top management and tightened criteria for opening new locations.
During his first two full years running Gap, net income increased dramatically as sales rebounded and the effects of cost-cutting kicked in. The company paid down debt and earned back its investment-grade credit rating. Today, its balance sheet is far healthier. But in the second half of 2004, the recovery began to stall.
Outdated stores were making the uninspired merchandise look even worse. Mr. Pressler, a devotee of consumer research, discovered that while many customers still had loyalty to the Gap brand, the stores hadn't kept up with the industry. Tables were chipped. The maple floors looked worn. Too much space was dominated by posters of Gap ads. In focus groups, customers described the stores as "institutional."
"There's been a shift； people don't want to just keep up with the Joneses. They'd really rather be their own unique selves," says Robyn Waters, president of RW Trend and the former vice president of trend, design and product development for Target.
Mr. Pressler says a growing number of specialty retailers are forcing the industry to pay as much attention to store atmosphere as to products. He cites the Pottery Barn division of Williams-Sonoma Inc. for creating warm, comfortable stores that people want to spend time in. "We want these stores to be almost like you're at home," he says. "We don't want to be as austere or sterile as we have been in the past."
Homey Atmosphere
Starbucks Corp. has been especially adept at creating a homey atmosphere, encouraging customers to linger after they pay for their drinks by providing music, entertainment and sometimes high-speed Internet access.
Now Gap wants to cultivate more of that feeling. In June 2003, the company created a new position, vice president of brand store experience, for Mr. Hufnagel. The 33-year-old executive had previously worked at Abercrombie & Fitch, where he helped create the look of the Hollister brand, a surfer-themed chain popular with high-school students. His job at Gap is to ensure that every aspect of a store －－ from lighting to the stereo system to pictures on walls －－ reinforces how Gap wants customers to feel about the brand.
In May of 2004, he and 20 other Gap employees split into three teams. They traveled throughout Europe, Asia and North America, stopping in London, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and other cities. They visited stores, art galleries, museums and amusement parks, took 4,000 photographs and recorded their observations in journals. The goal, Mr. Hufnagel says, was "to go see what everyone else was doing and really experience a lot of different customer experiences －－ and not just retail."
One evening, after a long day of visiting stores and the Tate museum in London, Mr. Hufnagel spied a row of pubs with chalkboards outside advertising their nightly specials. Each was handmade and slightly different. He snapped a picture.
On the same stop, another Gap executive was captivated by the scale of giant, colorful graphics －－ a paisley print in one area, flowers and clouds in another －－ that filled 20-by-20-foot walls inside a Marks & Spencer department store. Another team was struck by the young woman who was their tour guide at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They noticed her enthusiasm and how proud she was of the work she presented. That, too, went in their notes.
Back in San Francisco, the groups spent a week organizing photos, deciphering notes and sifting through journal entries. Next they distilled their findings into a one-page brief encompassing the ideas they liked most, such as warmer lighting, improved fitting rooms, and display tables made of solid wood, instead of laminate that chipped and showed cheap particleboard underneath.
They then began developing a detailed plan for a remodeled store, down to new spotlights to replace harsh fluorescent lighting and separate entrances for men and women. In September 2004, they sat down Mr. Pressler for hours of discussions about the Denver stores.
"Honestly, one of the biggest questions was a dark wood floor," Mr. Hufnagel says. "Gap has always had those maple floors." He argued, successfully, that darker floors, made of European white oak stained medium-dark, would make the space look warmer and more friendly.
Gap won't say what it spent to remodel the Denver stores, which reopened in April. The retailer also renovated stores in San Diego and Hartford, Conn., in the fall, experimenting to see if certain changes had a greater impact on sales than others. Executives decided that only the full package of cheerily painted walls, spotlights, an upgraded stereo system, and dark wood floors and tables created the proper effect.
The Cherry Creek store looks almost nothing like a typical Gap store. Walls are to be repainted four times a year in different colors； for the holidays, red and green. Taking a cue from the giant pictures inside the Marks & Spencer store, Gap painted phrases such as "give joy" in huge letters.
More merchandise has been moved from the back room to the selling floor, to give customers more reasons to stop and look around. The store has been divided with walls into smaller rooms, creating a boutique atmosphere. The denim area is much more prominent than in the past, and work and casual clothes get their own spaces. Fitting rooms have free bottles of water and adjustable lighting.
The chalkboard signs outside the London pubs were transformed into the chalk-written signs in the denim area. They add a personal touch missing at many big chains, Mr. Hufnagel says, and they also happen to be cheaper than shipping printed signs to every store. The fitting rooms also have chalkboards where a store employee can write down a customer's name.
Inspired by the enthusiastic guide at the Kennedy Space Center, Gap put more emphasis on employee training. Now, instead of pushing particular items, staffers are supposed to spend more time asking customers about their needs.
One success has been the newspaper stand in the seating area, which Mr. Hufnagel says is inexpensive, simple to maintain and "makes a big brand feel smaller." Erin Reid, a 21-year-old college student visiting the Cherry Creek store, said he liked the addition of the leather couch, where he waited while a friend shopped for jeans. The new store design is "a little more confusing, but there's more to look at," he said. "The colors are more vibrant."
Dropped Ideas
Some local touches didn't prove to make economic sense. When the stores first reopened, cashiers wrapped jeans in butcher paper printed with an image of the Denver skyline and sold shirts printed with the names of local neighborhoods, such as "Wash Park" and "LoDo." But because it's not cost-effective to make goods for just a few stores, Gap has discontinued them, though it doesn't rule out reviving some ideas.
Gap is also rethinking the product mix in each store. Instead of shipping the same sizes to each location, it's stocking them based on an area's demographics and what customers have bought in the past. In suburban stores where most shoppers are moms, there will be more space for kids' and babies' clothing. Tourist markets such as New York City, where Gap has a remodeled store at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, should get more T-shirts and sweatshirts with the Gap logo.
In the past year, employees have been freed to dress mannequins to local tastes. In Manhattan, Gap mannequins wear the latest denim styles, Mr. Hufnagel says, while at Midwestern stores, mannequins tend to be dressed in slightly larger sizes, because people there generally wear their clothes less fitted.
Gap now plans to remodel its best-selling stores first for the greatest impact, rather than moving city by city. "I think it does a lot toward making it an inviting, friendly place to shop," says Lauren Cooks Levitan, a retail analyst with SG Cowen & Co.
She's quick to add that simply overhauling stores won't solve Gap's problems. "A good store environment can't overwhelm weak product, but it can enhance decent product," she says.
作者：ceo/cfo 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 Its Sales in a Funk,Gap Makes Big Bet...(zt) -- ceo/cfo - (14105 Byte) 2006-1-06 周五, 20:45 (692 reads)
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