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- [00:05]
A
Hello and welcome back to the Glossy Podcast. I'm your host, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi, and I'm here with our international reporter, Zofia Zviglinska. Hello, Zofia.
- [00:15]
B
Hi, how are you doing?
- [00:16]
A
I'm doing well, thank you for being here. Today's episode, I will be joined by a guest a little later to talk about the way that the shopping calendar has changed. But first for our intro, I thought we'd just spend a few minutes discussing the World cup because we didn't get to do a full dedicated episode on it. We did do a couple good stories on Glossy co, which you should check out. But I'm a big soccer fan and I feel like the World cup had a lot of interesting fashion adjacent moments. I want to just run through a few of those big ones. But first off, Zofia, I gotta say I'm sorry for the Three Lions, England did not make it all the way despite, I think, having a pretty strong team. So I'm sorry about that.
- [00:57]
B
No, I mean, it was bound to happen. I guess the wait is going to be still elongated a little bit longer. Maybe we'll get another chance in four years time, but for now the disappointment is still stinging and I think most people are just waiting for the Premier League to start again because we're in August, which is famously a bit of a, a dead month, football wise.
- [01:20]
C
Yes.
- [01:20]
A
Yeah. The only league that the big league that's in season right now is mls, which I've been watching the American League. The level of competition is not as high, but the World cup was a very fun tournament and I feel like there was a lot of interesting fashion adjacent moments. A lot of players that I think are very famous outside the US but have become like this. For the American audience who is not maybe super into soccer or football, this, this was their first time meeting them or encountering them. Erling Haaland has absolutely, I think, become a household name in the US in just the last couple of months. He was world famous obviously outside the US for several years now, but he really made a big impact. I think my mom loves him. Lots of people who are not tuned into sports are now very aware of him. I just think he has a great presence. We had a great story on Glossy about his hair ties. He has this notable long, flowing hair and our colleague Emily Jensen wrote a great story talking to the brand that makes his hair ties. When he was getting off the plane, he had this extremely rare Birkin bag that everyone was kind of thirsting over. I looked it up. It's like a five figure bag. It's extremely expensive. So yeah, I think there's a lot of players who are very fashionable and style icons who are now in the American consciousness that weren't there before. What else stood out to you? Zofia.
- [02:39]
B
Yeah, I mean, on those two points, Harlan's also kind of prolific. Not just fan, but I guess he has a little bit more of an investment fashion. One, he's an investor in the hair brand that he wears and two, he actually has like a whole collection of Hermes bags. I think he said that he'd appeared with seven rare Hermes pieces. Apparently there were $317,000 combined. But I think he has a lot more different ones as well. And they're all kind of collector levels variation. There's like a specific kind of range that they have called Couroir. So it seems like he's kind of turned the World cup into a bit of a mes showcase and maybe we'll see some more of his pieces kind of coming up. But I think there's also a lot to say around kind of more popular fashion. Obviously the big thing is the competition between Nike and Adidas on the pitch and off it. But also I guess the differences and the ways that they've approached the team kits. So everything from like the more nostalgic ones that are inspired by retro pieces from like the 2000s or kind of late 90s all the way through to like what the most popular ones are from certain countries. I think Brazil's team kit was particularly popular, worn by a lot of different celebrities like Sabrina Carpenter and Tyler. And I think there's been a lot of interest in kind of Brazil and Brazilian fashion as a result. So other things like Nike, Brazil, Havinus, kind of Brazilian designers have all kind of blown up a little bit during the World cup too.
- [04:23]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, anecdotally in New York I saw so many football jerseys, soccer jerseys on the streets. I mean, people literally selling them, you know, bootleg ones on the, on the street, which I may have bought one or two. Um, but yeah, I, I think I, I got some data from Stockx that showed they could see spikes in purchases of jerseys for teams as they won. Like the Spain off white. Not the brand off white, the color like the off white with the red stripes away kit that they wore not in the final, but in the semifinal. I believe, like that jersey had a huge spike right at like 6pm Eastern time, right when the final was over. So as soon as they won, people were like, I'm buying that jersey. So that's kind of interesting. On your point about Holland's bag collection, Messi also had a really amazing collection of Rolexes on display in his various pre tournament appearances and press conferences. He wore three different extremely rare and extremely expensive Rolexes with like kind of a. One of them had sort of a pop of like Tiffany blue on the dial which also kind of matches the Argentina colors. So that was also pretty fun to see his, his very enviable Rolex collection. And then there were also a lot of just official brand collaborations. I really liked the one that the streetwear brand palace did with the English national team. I don't know if you saw that one. Yeah, it's interesting because it's kind of takes inspiration from the kits that the teams are wearing, but it's definitely not something you'd actually wear on the field. It's much more streetwear inspired. The Virgil Abloh archive also did a very similar one, I think with the US national team. Willy Chavarria did a collection. I don't think it was in direct collaboration with the Mexican national team, but it was clearly heavily inspired by Mexican soccer culture. So there was a lot of little things like that hovering around the tournament as well. I think that's all the notable ones for me. Was there any other interesting fashion related things you saw at the tournament you want to mention before we move on?
- [06:23]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, we've talked about the kind of tunnel walk with more American sports and I think that this was also a big moment for tunnel walks both across teams and kind of individual players. So there was like a Congolese born designer called Alvin Jr. Mack who dressed up the Dr. Congo team in tailoring, which I thought was really, really cool. And then kind of every big player arrived with various levels of kind of outfit choices, whether that's kind of Mbappe Kunde or Bellingham. Like all of them had different looks kind of coming into the season and then again kind of talking a little bit more about the kind of pitch stuff. And I think that our previous kind of World cup guest and analyst Daniel Law Miller wrote about this in his substack, but he wrote about the kind of pink boots that subsequently got picked up across most other publications. And Nike, Adidas and New Balance kind of all came out with pink boots. And a lot of the players on the pitch were also wearing them. So it seems like that's having a little bit of a moment as well.
- [07:30]
A
Yeah, for sure. Last thing I'll say is also the, you mentioned the Congolese tailoring. That was the one with the leopard print accents. Right. That looked so sick. I like that. And I liked a lot of the managers, the coaches outfits as well. Mauricio Pochettino, the US Coach, wore this Hugo Boss casual overshirt at basically every game and press conference. I'm pretty sure, which I thought he looked very casual, but put together, a lot of people were searching for that shirt afterwards. I like soccer. I'm glad people were into it in the U.S. i hope that the energy continues once the Premier League starts. Like you said, next month, I will be watching. And like I said, there's a lot more, I think players that are now well known in the US I think Mbappe and Messi were already very popular and well known. But now Jude Bellingham, I think a lot of people were not familiar with him in the US but before this tournament. And I think he also made a very positive impression on the American mind. But let's pause our World cup conversation there. We have a whole conversation to get to after this. This week I spoke with Kelly Peterson, who's the global retail leader at PwC, about the changes to the shopping calendar. Events like holiday shopping, back to school, all those periods, Prime Day, have gotten elongated. They're now instead of one day, it's a week or a month. Holiday season is now starting in like October, which is butting into Halloween and all these other things. So I talked with Kelly about how those shopping periods are getting all stretched out and out of whack and the effects that's having on the consumer and on fashion brands. It was a very good conversation, I thought. So that's what we've got for you right now after a short break.
- [09:11]
B
That's exciting. I think I've seen one collection of Summerween and I don't want to see anymore.
- [09:29]
A
Okay, today we are talking about the shopping calendar. Things used to be very easy, very simple. You shopped back to school at the end of summer. You shopped for holidays right before the holidays. You waited for big annual sales at your favorite retailers before you went and shopped there. But it feels like the schedule has gotten very out of whack in recent years. Prime Day has become Prime Month. It's moved earlier and earlier in the summer. Holiday sales are starting in October even. It feels like a lot of brands are either perpetually on sale or never on sale. So the Glossy team, we were discussing this. We wanted to answer the question, are there shopping seasons anymore? How are people shopping in time and how are those seasons playing out and are these changes affecting customers and brands and in what ways? And to talk about it, we have a great guest, Kelly Peterson. Kelly is the global retail leader at the professional services firm PwC. They publish the Holiday Outlook every year, which is a great report. And the last, I want to say last year or two, this has come up in the reports that I've seen. Kelly, thank you for being here and I'm excited to have you on the Glossy podcast.
- [10:31]
C
Yeah, thank you for having me.
- [10:34]
A
Let's start with. Would you agree with my characterization there at, at the beginning about the shopping calendar and the way it's changed?
- [10:41]
C
Yeah, I, I do. I do think that calendars are starting to be blurred and the reason is, is because all of the traditional shopping windows have been elongated. Right. I think it started a few years ago, frankly, with the holiday shopping, specifically around Black Friday and how a lot of retailers started to come out earlier and earlier and earlier. And it wasn't just about Black Friday anymore. Right. They started on Thursday and then now that's become Black Friday month. And so it's just elongated that calendar. And I think we see the same thing now, right? Back to school shopping. We, we see it actually starting right when the school year ends. Right. So we really have to think about a couple of month window, mainly July and August, but even some of that starts to slip into early or into late June as well. And so, yeah, we've definitely seen these calendars elongated and so it starts to become very, very blurry.
- [11:35]
A
Yeah. And from my side, I can even see it in the pitches that I get because I'm getting emails from PR people saying we're getting ready for our back to school campaign in like May. And I know they're sending that to me a month or two in advance, but you're right, even in June, I'm starting to see some of those back to school campaigns. And Cyber Monday became Cyber Week, obviously. What do you think is, is driving that shift? Is that a consumer led change or a brand or retailer led change? Like who, who's making the decision to start earlier?
- [12:08]
C
I actually think it's a little bit of both, but I, but I do think it starts probably with the brands, right. That the brands are always trying to. And the retailers are always trying to capture those consumers and they want to be the first ones to capture them. I think it's actually a really good example in Back to School and our survey results where we've seen why they want to capture these consumers. Right. So if I just, if I Just look at our back to school survey. On average, the average family spends $922 for back to school. But the interesting thing is it's actually not just the back to school season in its own meaning. It's not just that window of back to school, because we also found that families spend $635 a month on average, every single month throughout the school year. Right. So it's really become about retailers not just trying to get a window of revenue and a window of sales during that period. It's really become about customer acquisition, capturing those customers and using that momentum to continue to carry that spend on for the entire year. And so I think it really started as a competitive thing for retailers. And now from a consumer side, consumers are getting trained. Right. They, they expect to see sales around a holiday out early. Right. You expect to be, to be driving down the street and seeing these Halloween stores opening up in mid to late summer. And so, you know, the consumer has always been, has now been trained on this and they're, they're waiting and their, their wallets and their spender are, are waiting for, you know, for the sales, for the promotions, for even retailers to start talking about some of these holidays.
- [13:53]
A
Yeah. The annual appearance and disappearance of the spirit Halloween down the street for me is always a good marker of where we are in the year. And you're right, it does appear that the abandoned CVS turns into a spirit Halloween much earlier. It seems like I also love Halloween, so I'm excited whenever I see it appear. But I think those two sides that we just talked about, the brand side and the consumer side, it is really interesting because like you said, I think there's a competitive edge to going earlier, to getting ahead of your competitors when it comes to back to school or to Black Friday on the consumer side. I know you said they're being trained by it a little bit, but do you think there's a little bit of competitiveness among consumers too? Like we got to get there earlier so we get the good deals or like, I don't know if that's even a factor. Do you think there's any, any element of that driving consumer behavior?
- [14:44]
C
Yeah, I think in general, the competitive nature of it has always been relatively contained to an event shopping window. Right. Like again, it's a Black Friday. It starts at this time, on this date. I think what you're seeing is the consumer is almost taking a gambling oriented approach, thinking, okay, well when is this product going to be the best price? Or if there's a scarcity to your point, like, when. When am I actually going to be able to get this product? Oh, I better get it now. I better get it early. Because we've seen so many, you know, media reports of products being sold out. So there is, There is certainly a sense of urgency. We see that. We see that in a really big way during the, during the holiday shopping period. Right. And we can see what happened in last year's holiday shopping period, specifically in a survey we did, is that people really started to kind of get out of the season early because they were worried about, you know, prices may be increasing later in the season. Tariffs and things like that were a factor at that time, as well as potential scarcity of certain products. And so, yeah, we definitely think that the consumers are adding to this fuel as well and just ready to spend when that moment hits.
- [15:58]
A
Yeah. And, you know, I didn't even think about it, preparing for this episode, but the tariffs this past year probably have thrown a pretty sizable wrench into people's spending kind of schedule in their mind. Exactly. Like you said, there were tons of brands that we cover on glossy who sent out emails like, we're going to be raising our prices soon because of tariffs. So it's not really a sale, but it's kind of like it's going to be the opposite of a sale soon. It's going to be more expensive, so you should shop now. Do you think that's like, is that kind of just confined to that one year of tariff chaos? I mean, they just announced more tariffs on Canada this week, so it seems like that's not totally put to bed yet. But do you, do you envision that having even more of an effect on the shopping calendar in the future?
- [16:43]
C
It definitely could. I do feel like the, the wave of, I guess, of panic from a consumer point of view has kind of, you know, has, has, has, has run its course. You know, I think, I think at some point, consumers became just tired of all of the ups and downs. There was tariffs, there was no tariffs. And it was back and forth. I think, from what that means from a consumer point of view, in terms of spending, I think they're frankly confused. The other part of it, too is, again, you look back to last holiday season, there was tariffs announced, but it didn't mean that prices were going to change in stores because retailers knew tariffs were coming. They stockpiled inventory, lower tariff rates. It also just naturally takes time for those tariffs to work its way through the supply chain and the economy. And so it's interesting because from a Consumer point of view, you're hearing all of these media reports all the time, and you almost expect that when you walk into the store tomorrow, prices are going to be high, but they weren't high. And so I do think you hear consumers, it's affecting overall confidence. But it's not like they can directly attribute, you know, a tariff, as you mentioned, to Canada to the prices I'm going to pay in the store right now. And so I think, I think their reaction has become muted. Muted after, you know, a year plus of hearing all of the ups and downs.
- [18:02]
A
Yeah, the ups and downs. The Supreme Court decisions and the other, the backlash and things changing day by day. And on the brand side, I know a lot of brands were very exhausted by that, too. A lot of people have told me they would rather the tariffs be high and just stay there, then change every day because that makes it impossible to plan. So I want to ask you about specific holiday or specific shopping kind of events throughout the calendar year. Prime Day, back to school, et cetera. But just to start, like, what would you lay out as like the biggest shopping periods of the year? Like we mentioned a few already, Holiday, Black Friday, back to school. Like, is there in your mind like a set number of events or, you know, I was thinking about how like China has a couple more that we don't like, Singles Day, although you do see a little bit more of that, like singles day promotions in the US More recently. But yeah, what's like the, the calendar in your mind?
- [18:55]
C
Yeah. So I mean, holiday, holiday shopping is going to always be, be the biggest one. Then we also see shopping events around. Mother's Day is a, is a very big event as well, less so Father's Day more Mother's Day is, tends to be, tends to be a big increase. And then as we go throughout the year, it's back to school. And then we also do see, I know we talked about it a minute ago, we do see an uptick in Halloween. So those are like the, in terms of the, the calendar spending, the big ones. And there's other holidays in there too. I mentioned Father's Day. I mentioned Easter. Those are, I would definitely say secondary compared to those bigger ones. And then you mentioned. Right. Prime Day, which is a couple times a year. And now, you know, it tends to shift somewhat when it is. Some retailers are even aligning with Singles Day. So there is, there is a bunch of other ones. But I, I would actually put Prime Day up in that upper echelon as well because a lot of the other, you Know, retailers have, have jumped onto that bandwagon. But those are, those are the biggest, those are the biggest ones.
- [19:53]
A
Yeah. And is Prime Day the only one that's really tied to kind of a single retailer? Even though like you said, others have timed things around Prime Day. But it feels like Amazon is the, the retailer that can create an entire shopping holiday on their own.
- [20:08]
C
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, and I think to your point, right, it has expanded into other retailers and so, you know, it's becoming a shopping event. Right. And I think, I think it's smart for other retailers. They're not going to just watch, you know, one company go and you know, capture all these sales at discounts. And so really everybody is kind of having sales now around, around that time. Obviously more online oriented. Right. It's almost like a Cyber Monday type of event versus, you know, a Black Friday where you would go in store. But yeah, I mean other, other retailers have definitely jumped on that bandwagon. But I don't, I don't think anybody really out there has created the clout other than they, that, other than Amazon to, to go and actually drive a specific holiday shopping event. It's just been them.
- [20:50]
A
Yeah. And do you think Prime Day is influential enough to affect the, like to have like assert gravity on the rest of the calendar in terms of like if Prime Day is earlier in summer, are people going to be doing more back to school shopping earlier because of that?
- [21:06]
C
It has. Yeah, absolutely. I mean it, you know, again, consumers are going to have constraints in their wallet, right. And for, from a retailer's perspective, this is what they work on, right. This is strategy of how to capture the most dollars from that, from that wallet. And so, you know, shifting dates does potentially have a big impact because you know, they're using funds in those wallet that they may not have until later. And it is, it is very strategic in terms of, you know, when, when they do it, all of the strategies behind how they decide what exact date is. I mean I, I don't, I don't have those details but you know, it's not just a random day. They, they pick, right. They look at, they look at, you know, income over time and how, you know, how the consumer is walling while it's feeling at certain periods of time as well as, you know, they don't want to get too close to another holiday. Right. Because the consumers are going to be, going to be spending it on that instead.
- [21:56]
A
Yeah. What about for, I want to move to holiday for a minute because one thing I've heard from brands and retailers. And you mentioned this holiday is obviously by far the biggest, you know, shopping period of the year for, for many businesses. I know the planning for holiday often starts, you know, a full year ahead of time. In right after holiday 2025, they're planning for holiday 2026. Where is the holiday shopping season now? Is it the entire fourth quarter of the year or is it more than that? Where would you say it kind of loosely starts now?
- [22:29]
C
Yeah, I think what we found in a lot of the data that we've been looking at is it starts in the early fall. So kind of October timeframe is when it really does start. I mean, you have a little bit of hold back because Halloween is frankly there at the end of October. It starts in earnest in November. But we have seen in previous years that October tends to be an early holiday shopping month. You look at last year, what happened right, is retailers actually started to talk about holiday much earlier last year trying to capture those sales. They actually went on promotion a little bit earlier. It did help them and fuel some of that. And so we've seen that even pre Halloween time start to become a real shopping boom. And I'd even say into like September, mid to late September, we're starting to see some retailers talk about it as well. So yeah, I mean it has, you know, to the point right at the beginning of the show, it has just elongated that overall shopping window and retailers are looking for any ways they can to capture that dollar.
- [23:34]
A
Yeah. And I think that brings us in. I want to ask a couple kind of broader questions and one of them is, is there any like one, one potential downside of the elongation in my mind is like basically just consumer fatigue. I feel like if there's a sale, if there's a holiday push happening for like five months, I do feel like it can possibly lose some of the urgency. Some of the call to action is maybe not as. Doesn't feel as urgent because, well, the sale's still going to be running in three months or something. It might even be better. So what do you think is the impact of that on the consumer? Is there any risk to having your, your holiday shopping or your back to school shopping have such a wide window? Like does that change anything for the consumer?
- [24:20]
C
I mean, it could actually change a couple of things, right. Theoretically, you think about it could actually increase their overall wallet because, you know, people obviously get paid in cycles, right. Whether it's biweekly, semi, monthly or monthly, people get, people are getting, you know, banning pain. And in the Past you really think about this holiday mindset, right? From a consumer point of view, they think, okay, well, my paychecks, my income from Black Friday until holiday, a certain percentage of that is going to be spent on holiday shopping. Right? Now what's happened, and this is part of the strategy on the retailer side too. If you elongate that holiday, you have more opportunities to pick up on some of that cash flow that's happening from a consumer, right? So from a consumer point of view, it actually is likely expanding the overall spend on holiday because of the time frame. And that's what I mentioned before. It now becomes about almost gambling from a consumer point of view, right? When is the product going to be in stock? How long is it going to be in stock? For that I want to get what's the best promotion, what's the best price at that time. And you can bet now that people are using AI to go and figure out when the best time to buy something is, you know, and they can look at history, it can even do some predictions. And so, yeah, I mean it has, it has a, it does have an impact on, on the consumer. You know, not to mention, I'm sure we've all heard of it, right? We talk, we talk to our friends and family. You know, there's a little bit of fatigue right around the holiday time frame because the window just lasts so long. And so it has, it has definitely created, you know, if you rewind 15 or 20 years ago, it's definitely a different mindset today than it was back then, for sure.
- [26:01]
A
Yeah. And as you were saying this, I hadn't considered that, but you're so right that the long. I was only thinking, you know, you lose the urgency, but you also have, you have more paychecks spread out over a couple of months. And I have basically my wife and all of my immediate families and Christmas and Valentine's Day, like their birthdays and those holidays are all in the same. My entire media family is born in winter and so is my wife. And there's Valentine's Day and there's Christmas and those couple months are rough on the old wallet. But, and on that point though, where does, where does spending power come into this? Because I'm imagining if you're a consumer whose, whose wallet is under a lot of pressure, cost of living in groceries, etc. All going up, you have to throw away all the lettuce you bought because it's going to give you cycles prices. Does that make you more or less likely to participate in, in seasonal shopping? Events, because I could see if you have, you know, you're going to shop when there's a sale because that's, you know, if you have, if you're spending more on groceries and rent and other things. But also I could see people just sitting out of some optional shopping events entirely because they're like. That's just not that important to me right now.
- [27:09]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think history would tell us that there is external events. Right. Whether it's health. And even on the more extreme side, you look at Covid, they do have direct impact on shopping time frames and shopping events of the year. So, yeah, I mean, it definitely could. All of the external factors that are out there right now. I think, as you mentioned, there's been a couple of health things in the last two to three weeks where people are, people are really concerned about that. Has that affected back to school shopping? I don't think so, not yet. But I mean, you do look at history, even how pandemics and things like that have had an impact.
- [27:51]
A
Yeah. What about some other factors affecting the seasonal shopping calendar? I was thinking earlier we were talking about exclusivity and whether the product that you want is going to be around or there's going to be enough availability. But I was just thinking, you know, just this past two weeks I've been following Gap and released this collection with Hailey Bieber of Denim, and it sold out in like minutes. And I've seen a lot of people kind of like a little agitation about when is the restock coming? And that's not tied to any, you know, that just dropped in the middle of the summer. That's not, I don't think, tied to any specific shopping event. So does the rise of these kind of exclusive limited time drops that big brands put out and people drop everything to go buy them, does that disrupt the calendar in any way?
- [28:43]
C
I think overall, yes, theoretically, again, it could because it's taking from people's wallets. By the way, those events for the most part, not all the time, but have been very, very successful. As you just mentioned, these limited drops, these collaborations, they've really helped a lot of retailers drive significant sales in short periods of time and in some cases even reinvent brands. Right. And reinvent companies. And so, yeah, I mean, it definitely, definitely has an impact on, on the wallet. You know, I do think for the most part we see those collaborations and those limited drops kind of tail off during the holiday season because retailers don't really want to muddy the waters and, and, you know, and find ways to Take away from the core holiday shop thing that they know is going to be there. Right. A lot of them from a retail point of view are waiting for almost those down periods in the year where sales maybe aren't traditionally as high and they release some of these things and so they can, you know, gain those extra sales during those time frames. And so, you know, I think, I think from just capturing more consumer wallet out there, they, you know, they, they definitely have an impact. I mean, I do think we need to also look at the broader trends in the marketplace and specifically around the apparel versus the food part of retail. We've seen some interesting trends recently that apparel is actually overall doing quite well compared to the food part of retail. And one of the big drivers of that is GLP1 medication. And so you see this consumer that is really hungry for, it's kind of ironically using that term, but hungry for more apparel. Right. They're more confident, they want to go out more people are buying more clothes, people are actually going out to restaurants more people are going on vacation a lot more. And that's created this whole cycle of spending in the economy that is, you know, that's, that's kind of a new unique thing that we haven't really experienced the last many years. You know, I've been in the retail industry for 25 years. I frankly can't remember a moment in time of apparel and these types of things that are associated with people that are on GLP1s. I can't remember a moment of time in the last 25 years that's been like this right now. So I do think it's some pretty significant impact that some of these things are having on the economy. And so if you, if you fast forward that to what this means for, you know, back to school for holiday, right. As you think about the wallet in apparel, which is a big, a big part of back to school, in fact, it's the biggest part of back to school. Right. People might be exhausted from spending, you know, on themselves and self gifting is a big trend right now. And so we'll, it'll, it'll be interesting to see how, how back to school plays out. I mean, our survey said that, you know, it was actually, it was pretty optimistic. People were pretty optimistic they were going to be spending more, more during this, during this, know, during the spending window. But it'll be interesting to see how the results actually come back.
- [31:42]
A
Yeah. And on the, on the topic of these kind of drops or other things that sort of just happen in the middle of the calendar. And like you said, they avoid obviously the big shopping seasons for it to not muddy the waters. But there's also, I mentioned this earlier, I was thinking about the brands. It seems like there's a good amount of brands that are either perpetually on sale, like there's some sort of sale happening at all times and then there are plenty of brands and I've talked to them about the strategy who consciously don't ever do sales. They know they don't do promotions at all. Sometimes they even do. They kind of like make a big deal out of not participating in Black Friday. There's a couple of brands who have do campaigns. You know, I think Patagonia is one. They do campaigns around Black Friday about how they're not participating. I imagine that's a minority and maybe not super significant. But do you have any thoughts on that strategy of kind of just sitting out of the promotional calendar entirely and what that might do for the brand?
- [32:35]
C
Yeah, I think actually some brands have gotten some good media in the last couple of years for sitting out of that and consumers want to shop. But I think at the end of the day, consumers have a constrained wallet and they are looking to spend. I think from a retailer point of view there's a strategy here. Are we trying to gain the long term respect and know that that long term consumer. So I think taking a strategy of saying, hey, we're not going to plan Black Friday for these reasons. And some of them might be moral reasons, right. They're, they're creating a stickiness with the consumer from the brand. But that doesn't mean they're going to shop more because of that during the holiday period. Right. It's, it's really a long term play versus a short term window. Unfortunately, again, being in this industry for 25 years, there is this concept of, you know, you need, you need to feed the beast, a lot of them say, or you need, you know, there's the promotional drug that's out there, right. There's a lot of analogies out there. You know, you have to make your numbers during certain time periods. And Q4 is a big one. And so at the end of the day a lot of retailers just really need to, to go on promotion to make, you know, to make up the number. It's called Black Friday for a reason. Right. A lot of the retailers would go. The reason it's called Black Friday is because you go in the black after that, that time of year, you know, meaning you'd finally be profitable. And so that, that still holds true today. Right. That, that is a, that is a real, you know, that is a real dynamic in the market and those, those retailers need, need those sales.
- [34:01]
A
Yeah. Let me ask you two more things, Kelly, before we wrap up the first and it's kind of just to conclude our conversation, but if you were a brand leader or a retailer and you're starting to think about your, your 2027, you know, planning your calendar, your schedule for around promotions are, I don't necessarily want to ask you to give like super, you might not want to give like super strict recommendations, but what would you be keeping in mind? What are some things you'd be thinking about as you're making your plans?
- [34:29]
C
There's, there's a few things and I actually think the survey that we just came out is, is a, is a window into what some of those things are. So one, one I mentioned the dynamic around capturing a consumer during a certain period of time, which leads to more spending throughout the year. Right. So again, back to school, they spend $922 on average going back to school, but then they also spend $635 a month, right? It is, yes. You're not only getting sales, but it's actually a customer acquisition window. Right. And so really think about these events as a time to acquire the customer. Right. Because they're going to continue to spend in a lot of companies that have invested very heavily in loyalty. I think that's one. The second is really understanding the impact of AI in shopping. Every single. And the speed has been incredible. Right. We run surveys around a lot of the holiday periods. Back to school one, holidays another, obviously Halloween is another that we do Mother's Day and we always ask people are they planning to use AI in their shopping journey and that number is increasing so significantly every time. A year ago we asked that during back to School and it was almost zero today. And this survey, it came back as 73%. Right. So I think consumers are using technology, become smarter about how they, how they shop with a retailer. And retailers really need to think about this new channel almost. Right. And it's not a channel in the traditional sense, meaning they're not transacting via AI, but it's a Discovery Channel and it's a price checking channel. It's all of these things. Right. You really need to think about how that's going to have an impact on your, you know, your, your go to market strategy with, with the consumer. So I think, I think honestly those are, those are the two, two big things.
- [36:21]
A
Yeah, those are, those are good ones to keep in mind. Particularly that jump to 73%. That's, that's quite significant. I mean it makes sense because the, the technology is fairly new, but still that's, that's a huge jump in, in just a year. Last thing I want to ask you, just out of curiosity, are you a big promotional participant? Do you, do you wait for the big sales? Do you wait for holiday Black Friday or do you, do you, have you seen behind the curtain and you, you know the tricks?
- [36:48]
C
Yeah, I think, you know, I, I, I say I, I am and I'm not. Right. I, I am on certain categories, right. I think, I think as following this industry for a long time, I just know at a category level like when certain things may be maybe promoted, right? You look at elect, I'll give you an example. You look at electronics, electronics right around Black Friday, that's the time to buy electronics, right? Those go on sale. Then other things like clothes, it's a longer period of time. And I'd say if you look at back to school, traditionally what apparel looked like, which again and I'm bringing up apparel because it's the largest purchase item for back to school is that early on in the season, it's not on sale. Very late in the season, it is on sale. But then you run the risk of running out. I think it just depends on what's important important like in that category as an example, you know, I don't wait. I have three kids. I let them go and I, you know, I let them shop when they want for back to school. And just knowing that, you know, that's not where I'm necessarily going to save money because, you know, nothing is, nothing is worse than, you know, happy kid during back to school. If they're, you know, the thing they really wanted is sold out. And I actually even think like that specifically also comes through in our survey because we ask people what's the number one deciding factor for what you're spending in back to school? And you know, throughout retail history, everyone always says, well, it's price, right? It's the promotion, what I'm going to pay for something. But it's interesting, in this year's back to school survey, the number one factor of what was going to drive a purchase decision was actually the child's preference. And promotions took second seat to that. Right. And so if you think about this holiday season, this is how, you know, I interpret it as well, and this is how I think about it for my kids is that, you know, I'm gonna. This is such an important event for them, you know, going to school. In my kid's case, they're going to, you know, when I have one going into first year of high school, it's so important. I'm not going to nickel and dime on looking for a promotion. I'm going to make sure she gets what she wants. And so again, I think, you know, to answer your question, it's different strategies by different categories at different times of the year, but it really is threading a needle rather than, you know, an overall broad brush strategy that I have.
- [39:01]
A
Yeah, well, it sounds a lot better than my strategy, which is buying something at full price and then it goes on sale two days after that. That strategy does not work out for me, but I think that's all the time we have for this week's episode. Kelly, thank you so much for being here and answering all of our questions. I really appreciated all the insight.
- [39:20]
C
Yeah, thank you for having me.
- [39:22]
A
And as I mentioned, PWC puts out really great reports and surveys on a lot of this data, which you drew on several times throughout this conversation. And it was looking at some of the stats helped inform the topic of this conversation, too. So thank you so much for that.
- [39:37]
C
Yeah, thank you.
- [39:42]
A
And thank you for listening to the Glossy Podcast. Don't forget to give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you listen to this, because that helps us out so much. And don't forget to subscribe to the Glossy Podcast to hear interviews with industry insiders and we can review segments where we break down the news. The new episodes come out every Friday. Until the next time. Thanks for listening.