Inside Scoop

Image: Brendan Landis via Flickr

When we heard the rumors that Steve & Barry’s 2007 earnings were $20 million, from sales approaching $1 billion, we gave silent thanks that our business doesn’t need inventory, stores or a great bevy of staff.
With Steve & Barry’s 2% sales-to-earnings ratio, they might as well be a semiconductor company. If [...]

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The mild slowdown in clothing retail seems isolated to bricks and mortar - but online sales are booming.
According to Forrester’s latest online retailing report, $26.6 billion of clothing sold online in 2007, up from $22.7 billion the previous year. This accounted for a 12% share of US clothing sales, up from a 10% share in [...]

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Revolutions in clothing retail happen rarely. But they happen big.
Here are the key technologies that changed clothing retail each century. Can you guess what the 21st century one will be?
1600s – The tailor ceased to be the sole preserve of royalty and the aristocracy, as Europe’s merchant and professional classes began to out-source their [...]

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There’s a reason why many women spend all day looking through 15 different stores at hundreds of garments, and still buy nothing; or worse, buy something only to return it. And it’s not because “women love shopping”. It’s because most of the time, shopping sucks.
You can’t find what you need, when you need it. If [...]

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By now you’ve probably heard that fashion legend Yves Saint Laurent recently died. Sad news.
While his seminal work was well before my time, I wear the great-grandchildren of his designs every day:
From the YSL stable came clothes that we now accept as women’s wear classics: the pantsuit, the peacoat, the blazer, the safari jacket and [...]

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When my IT career started, Tom Ford was at Gucci and the world was obsessed with the looks he created: tight, low-waisted velvet pants worn with a partially unbuttoned tight satin shirt; long, slinky jersey dresses with strategic cut-outs; and a red velvet tuxedo made famous by Gwyneth Paltrow.
To this day, I love those early [...]

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A good startup should exist because their customers are hurting and they can cure the pain. (Not just to make the founders rich, although that’s a fine secondary goal
The Wardrobe Channel exists because the apparel industry is broken. Sure, they manage to sell $220 billion of clothing each year in the US alone [...]

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