Thursday, November 20, 2008

Housing crisis affected home fashion retail

With the economy in a recession on the way to a depression everything in
the economy has come to a hault. Consumers are not willing to buy as much as
they did in the past because of the tight money issues. Not only does this
effect the clothing aspect but the home fashion retail. Right now we are in a
housing crisis. Houses are not being sold or bought due to sticky financial
issues arrising. Without new houses people do not need to decorate therefore the
home fashion retail is plummeting. I think that the home fashion is in much more
danger than clothing because even with the recession people need clothes to
wear, however people can hold off on decorating their houses. This is not good
for the home fashion retail. Another reason why I feel the home fashion retail
is plummeting is because home fashion trends change every ten years, where as in
clothing there is a seasonal based trend. This could be another reason why the
home fashion retail segment is losing money as well. I am not looking forward to the
future and to see where the economy will lead the fashion industries.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Challenges of apparel retail

With the economic recession everything in our economy has paused. I know from experience working at Banana Republic in Charlotte for the past year that a year ago sales were stable and we met our goals each month with banana cards and the merchandise sale was above average. However when I went back a few weeks ago to work they had to let people go and we had not made our monthly goals since I had left. I know that its not only Banana Republic that is suffering from this economic recession. That is one challenge I see of apparel retail. Another one that I have noticed from working in the apparel retail business is that from the end of January to about March there are no customers. During this time I was not scheduled to work which put a damper on my income. I know others in the industry were also tight on cash because of the decline in business. The apparel retail industry will never go out of business but it is constantly fluctuating. These challenges that I mentioned are from my history working at Banana Republic and the things I have noticed throughout my year as an employer there.