網誌分類：新聞 |
昨天的《 The Wall Street Journal》， 有篇關於美國Saks Fifth Avenue 大減價的專題報導。Saks 是美國高檔百貨龍頭之一，其破天荒提早大出血，打亂了對手及供貨名牌商的部署。
大減價原本普通不過，《 The Wall Street Journal》卻能找到角度報導。原文「Saks upends luxury market with strategy to slash prices」相當長，以下節錄了Saks減價前的掙扎，為原文 的中部，後半部為供貨名牌商怎樣應對。。
Saks started planning its 2008 holiday season a year ago, there were few clues that the six-year boom in luxury goods was about to flop. Although other retailers were starting to suffer, it appeared that Saks's wealthy clientele -- its typical shopper has a $175,000 annual household income -- might help the chain buck the trend.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was approaching 13000, and "our customer feels good," Mr. Sadove said in November 2007, as Saks reported higher profits.
Then, September struck. Mr. Sadove was in Paris on Sept. 29, attending runway shows -- but his eyes were glued to his BlackBerry as he watched the Dow drop nearly 800 points in one day.
Next, he watched big spenders became penny-pinchers. That month, Saks's same-store sales fell 11%. In October, they declined another 17%, the worst monthly drop since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The change happened "over as short a period of time as you can possibly imagine," Mr. Sadove says.
The result: a huge disconnect between Saks's inventory and shoppers' appetite. At Saks's annual "private sale nights," early-November events for top customers, the usual 40% discounts got no response.
After lunch on Nov. 10, Messrs. Sadove and Frasch gathered with other executives to strategize. The Thanksgiving kickoff to shopping season was still a few weeks away, and maybe people's billfolds would loosen up by then. But Mr. Sadove was anxious.
So he floated the idea of deep price cuts.
Some colleagues urged drawing the line at 50%. But Mr. Frasch felt strongly that wouldn't be enough.
"I felt, the sooner we react, the better," he recalls. "I said, 'Let's not wait till December 26th' " to do something dramatic.
Their decision: A 70%-off sale would be used, but only in a worst-case scenario, if sales kept declining and shoppers remained bored by less eye-popping 40% rollbacks.
Extreme discounting of luxury goods is perilous. Not only does it potentially leave your best customers feeling duped for paying full price, it also erases fat profit margins of 50% or more.
"We are going into a period of total unknown," Mr. Frasch told the team.
On sale day, Tuesday, Nov. 25, a line of hundreds of women snaked out the entrance of Saks's eighth-floor shoe department in New York to buy, among other things, $800 Christian Louboutin pumps price-chopped to $250.
Nationwide, boutique owners were blindsided. In Los Angeles, less than three miles from Saks's Beverly Hills store, Tracey Ross, a well-known boutique owner there, decided not to match the cuts right away. So she was stuck trying to sell $2,400 dresses and $1,400 handbags at full price when similar goods were in the bargain bin, relatively speaking, just around the corner.
Ms. Ross says she phoned and pleaded with designers to take their merchandise back. They were "in complete denial," she says. "They said, 'You're Tracey Ross. You'll sell it.' "
In the end, she says, she had to discount so steeply that she couldn't pay her designers. "I am like, 'Do the math. I sold your $800 shoes for $50.' " She closed her store and filed for bankruptcy protection on Christmas Eve.
