A Renaissance Man

Some people lead cool lives. Max Raab, who died recently at the age of 81, was one of those people. Truly a Renaissance man, Raab founded several successful apparel companies, helped pioneer the concept of in-store shops and produced movies in his spare time.

Back in 1958, Raab and his brother started a clothing line called The Villager. The preppy-styled collection grew into a national phenomenon in the sixties. Raab even convinced department store retailers to create special in-store shops, with their own custom look, dedicated to the brand. I can still remember its logo—the Villager name enclosed in an oval with an eagle—with crystal clarity. “Is that a Villager?” my friends and I would ask each other whenever one of us turned up in an outfit that looked even vaguely preppy. It was the first brand that we ever panted over, from its shirtdresses and wraparound dresses to its button-down shirts and madras shorts. More than that, it was the first logo that we ever really coveted. In 1969, Raab sold The Villager (it was eventually acquired by Liz Claiborne).

Even as he was enjoying success in the apparel industry, Raab had his sights set on something else: the movies. In the late 1960s, he bought the film rights to the futuristic novel “A Clockwork Orange.” He was listed as an executive producer on the film, which was released in 1971. He went on to rack up film production credits for a whole slew of movies, including “Walkabout” and “Moment to Moment.”

But as much he loved the film business, Raab couldn’t get the rag trade out of his system. In 1974, he founded another apparel company, J.G. Hook. Initially a menswear line, it expanded into women’s sportswear. He also opened a necktie manufacturing company, Tango.

In 1998, Raab left the apparel business to start a documentary film company, Max Raab Productions. He produced and co directed “Strut!,” a documentary celebration of the Mummers, and “Rittenhouse Square,” a musical rhapsody.

In the final year of his life, Raab returned to his first love: retail. He opened a shop that sells tin toys and model planes, boats and cars. Published reports said he opened the store just for fun.

Good for him.

—Marianne Wilson

Penney’s Ullman Bets on American Living

In the Old West, according to movie lore, the hero rode into town on a white horse. He stood for strong traditional virtues, like family, hard work and honest value for the dollar.

This being the 21st century, the new American hero rolled onto the stage at Skylight in New York City on a Segway, a motorized scooter. At least that’s how Myron “Mike” Ullman, CEO of J.C. Penney, made his appearance Tuesday night at the debut of American Living, Penney’s biggest product launch ever.

Ullman uses a Segway to get around because of a physical condition that limits his mobility. But his ability to tap into the core of Penney’s customers is in no way impaired. Building on a turnaround foundation laid by predecessor Allen Questrom, Ullman has expanded Penney’s position as a true alternative to traditional department stores and specialty stores. By bringing to Penney Sephora, a company he ran before joining Penney, Ullman did what Questrom could not. He layered on a cosmetics option that brings female customers into the stores over and over.

With American Living, Ullman adds another coup. Developed, designed and produced by Polo Ralph Lauren, but with no mention of that pedigree in any marketing campaign, American Living is meant to be an “aspirational” choice across 40 different merchandise categories, from apparel to home furnishings, said Ullman.

The brand will officially launch with TV ads during Sunday’s Oscar Awards. Merchandise will appear in 600 of Penney’s top department stores across the country.

Will it work?

Probably, if the quality is there and Penney promotes it aggressively and often. Given Polo Ralph Lauren’s and Penney’s history, it’s fair to assume positive responses to both assumptions.

Particularly during these troubled economic times when customers are looking to trade down in price points while retaining as much quality and value as possible, American Living may well appeal to Penney’s existing public and to the new shoppers it wants to attract with products that have a Ralph Lauren look and feel but don’t mind that the merchandise doesn’t carry his signature Polo horse logo.

The company hopes that within five years American Living produces annual sales of at least $1 billion.

—Murray Forseter

Zappos Backlash

I received an e-mail this morning with the subject titled “OUTRAGE!” I could sense the panic and urgency in my friend’s e-mail and I knew it must be serious.

She attached a linked that revealed the following statement from Zappos.com:

“We will no longer be promoting "Free Overnight Shipping" and we no longer will be promoting our price protection policy. Instead, we will be focusing more on our "free shipping" and our expanding selection of merchandise.”

I went on Zappos.com's live chat option and asked the representative about the change:

"We decided to remove our price protection policy from Zappos because we didn't feel it was consistent with our goal of focusing mainly on customer service rather than on having very deeply discounted prices," she told me. "We found that most of the customers who were using our former price protection policy would actually save even more money if we started out with deeply discounted products in the first place, which is what you will now be able to find on 6pm.com."

"Regarding our decision to stop advertising and promoting free overnight shipping on Zappos it was a decision to stop advertising and promoting it, not a decision to actually stop doing it. Free shipping will always exist. There's always a great chance that a lot of orders are shipped just as fast as when we did provide free overnight shipping."

But judging by the tone of the e-mail, my friend didn't like those odds. And it's evident that Zappos just turned one of their most devoted shoppers into a very angry one. The online shoe retailer had successfully recruited an enormous amount of loyal shoppers with its free overnight shipping incentive and a 110% price-match guarantee. But if the e-mail is an indication of any backlash to come, Zappos better be ready for some major damage control by making it up to customers in other ways soon.

—Samantha Murphy

Mall Violence: Up Close and Personal

It’s been 70 days since a teenaged gunman opened fire in the Von Maur department store in Omaha, Neb., murdering eight shoppers before killing himself. The pages of my hometown newspaper, the Lincoln Journal-Star, no longer carry any stories on the shooting that occurred in our neighboring city, but the tragedy hasn’t been forgotten. And now, with another shooting earlier this month that killed five in a strip mall in Illinois, the wounds have been re-opened.

But instead of licking our wounds and moving on, the time has come for some kind of action.

I read earlier today that the National Retail Federation (NRF) and the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) have formed a working group to address how to combat active shooters in malls and stores. And a conference, to be held March 30-April 1 in New Orleans and co-hosted by both groups, will focus specifically on mall violence. (Visit www.icsc.org and click on “full meeting calendar” for more information on the Shopping Center Security Conference.)

Attendees of the conference will discuss how to train employees to protect themselves and their customers in the event of a shooting or hostage situation. It’s a sad state of affairs when an entire conference centers around protecting ourselves and our customers from murderers who target malls and retail stores. But that’s what it has come to, and I for one am glad that the NRF and ICSC have taken the bull by the horns.

—Katherine Field

Larry David and Me and Checkout Lines

Have you ever been stuck in the wrong line at the checkout? And by wrong, I mean the slow-moving one. It seems to happen all the time to me. Just the other night, I watched with growing frustration as the woman in front of me took out one credit card after the other, only to have each one declined. She then launched into her personal credit history with the very patient and chatty cashier. Meanwhile, I watched as two people—both of who had walked up to the checkout after me but were in a different line—cashed out and left the store.

I didn’t make a big deal of it as I wasn’t in all that much of a hurry. But the fact is, I don’t like stores that have checkouts with multiple lines. I don’t like having to gamble which line will move the quickest and which line will get bogged down. And I can really get riled up when a new register suddenly opens and the last person on line suddenly becomes the first on the new line.

I have tried not to let checkout line injustices (actually, inefficiencies is a better word) get the better of me. But sometimes I just can’t help give in to what one of my friends calls “queue rage.” It happened this past December, on the last Saturday before Christmas. There were three long lines at one central checkout. The line I was in had come to a standstill, while the other lines moved briskly. Then an associate walked up to the counter and opened a new register. I fumed as she called out to customers at the end of the other lines to come up to her register.

A store manager watched as this all unfolded. I went over to her and started talking (okay, so I raised my voice a little as the discussion went on) about the unfairness of it all, and how the customers would be better served with a single line that fed all the checkouts. She was patronizing. I left the store in a huff, feeling like some ranting crazy lady.

Still, I had to smile when a friend sent me a link to an episode of the HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in which the star, Larry David, fumes when he stands on the “wrong line” at a perfume counter. After loudly going on about the unfairness of checkout lines, he stalks out.

“There’s one way to solve it—one line,” David says.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

—Marianne Wilson

What’s in a Name?

Tom Coughlin is a name shared by two high-profile leaders in their respective fields currently undergoing vastly different experiences.

Tom Coughlin is the head coach of the Super Bowl Champion New York Giants. Exultation would be a mild term to describe his emotions after the Giants upset the 18-0 New England Patriots in Sunday’s Super Bowl, 17-14. Coughlin, who barely survived dismissal last year and earlier in this season’s campaign when his team started 0-2 in giving up 80 points, is expected to be rewarded with a four-year contract extension.

Super Bowl weekend also proved to be good to another Tom Coughlin, the disgraced former vice chairman of Wal-Mart, guilty of stealing more than half a million dollars worth of gift cards from the retail company. A judge ruled on Friday that Coughlin would not have to serve any jail time because of his health. The judge added 1,500 hours of community service to Coughlin’s sentence that also included 27 months of house arrest, five years’ probation, a $50,000 fine and $400,000 in restitution. It is uncertain if the government will appeal the judge’s ruling to keep Coughlin out of jail.

—Murray Forseter

Not Your Parents’ Stock Exchange

When you think of the stock market, you can’t help but visualize the loud metal starting bell ringing, and a frenzy of brokers and buyers primed for a busy day of trading. Today, Nasdaq is changing the face of financial trading with an all-electronic environment.

At Nasdaq Marketsite, New York City, there is no trading floor, or even a starting bell to commence daily trading. All processes, from ringing the bell to processing deals and orders, are all done electronically through algorithmic trading technology.

That said, I guess it was appropriate that Juniper Networks, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company that provides high-performance networking infrastructure and services, was invited to ring the opening bell on Wed., Jan. 30. Juniper is a well-known name in the retail industry, and has retail customers such as bebe stores inc., Hallmark Canada and Rent-A-Center.

(For example, bebe stores, inc., uses the company’s architecture to reduce bandwidth and improve performance across its e-commerce site. Besides helping the company reduce bandwidth costs by 30%, Juniper’s architecture helped bebe accelerate load times by 43%, thus improving the customer experience.)

The Nasdaq event marked Juniper’s 12th anniversary, and highlighted the company’s milestone of reaching $2.8 billion in total revenue for 2007.

Forty-two Juniper executives and associates were present at the event. They cheered on Scott G. Kriens, Juniper’s CEO and chairman, as he rang the proverbial bell and announced Juniper’s next milestone: to keep up the pace and become a $10 billion company.

—Deena M. Amato-McCoy