REFLECTIONS

Professor Hanson wrote an excellent column yesterday about the economic problem that has no name: The general incompetence that has permeated the sales and service section of our businesses and has turned the simplest business transaction into the Labors of Hercules.  http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWZjNjM5NGZmOTU5MjQ3OWUzYzQ1Y2U2YmZiYjk5NjA=

I wish to opine more on this subject and suggest that the reason there is a lack of consumer confidence in this country is not the economy, but what’s available for consumption.  I am a native born California Girl, born and bred to shop.  I used to love malls, now you can’t pay me to go into one.  There is nothing in the stores except clothes for 6 feet tall anorexics and surly sales clerks.  To demonstrate what I mean this is an excerpt from a letter I just wrote to the Disney Co.

I have read news reports that merchandise sales are down at Disney parks and that is blamed on the recession.  I have news for you its not the recession; it’s your merchandise.  I just returned from 2 weeks at Walt Disney World. …..Usually I go over-budget at WDW but this time I only spent half the money I brought with me. 

 

Your buyers are buying shirts cut in the latest style and fashion.  ….I am a size 8, not fat certainly, but hardly super skinny.  All the women’s clothes at Walt Disney World are made for very young, super skinny women……Even size Large and X-Large shirts were clinging like spandex. 

Even if you can find clothes you can wear they won’t last long.  Usually a pair of  pants from Landsend will last me for years.   The last pair I bought tore after less than a year.  Tank tops can be washed once and then shrink to fit Barbie. The shoes I used to buy for BurkeanSon would last until he almost outgrew them.  Now after a few weeks those shoes fall to pieces.  If you can’t build shoes for 9 year old boys that can resist mud and slides into first base you really should not be in the shoe business.     

I used to buy clothes at Mervyns’s for myself and my son.     But the last few years every time I went to my local Mervyns the “ladies” clothes were all designed for underfed teenagers.  The boy’s clothes were all designed by Hannibal Lecter.   I was told these awful clothes were business decisions based on what the consumer wanted.  Recently that particular Mervyns was shut down, and it is blamed on the “economy.”  Maybe, just maybe it’s because consumers don’t want to dress their sons to look like serial killers.

I have no confidence as a consumer because stores purchase whatever the Emperors in lower Manhattan tell them to buy.  I have no confidence as a consumer because the underpaid toddlers working in overseas sweat shops do shoddy work.  If you could somehow restore the equity in my home or make my 201k solvent again, I still wouldn’t shop as I once did.  It’s not the economy stupid it’s the shopping.