Spies Like Us: Talented Blonde On the Loose at Short Hills Mall

 Ok - we all know its crunch time for the retailers into XMAS. You can read all the bulge-bracket sell-side gobbledy-gook, and try to make sense of whats REALLY going on, OR . . you can follow the Talented Blonde on her stealth tour of the real world of retail. This weekend, your tireless blogstress yet AGAIN was in the mall, and this time it was with SPIES. Why? Because if you want to get a real look as to what’s going on, you need to get the retailers to open up. So the Talented Blonde brought what seemed and looked to be “helpless victims”, looking for a little holiday shopping guidance. She sent them into the very heart of the mall, to see if they could get the retailers to take their pants down a bit, and offer some real insights as to the strength of the holiday spend. And BOY did it pay off. Nothing like a mid 40’s married dude wandering helpless in Tiffany to get the sales help swarming like SHARKS. TB’s “spy” hooked a woman from TIF corporate sales, and in the course of 15 minutes of mindless shopping, found out that in fact the woman had been recruited from NYC to go out and help at the mall for the day to deal with what was hoped to be a busy sunday. HOWEVER - this nice corporate type owned up to the truth - the day was slow, people weren’t shopping. When they were, the ASP’s were DOWN, and the fear of the impending recession was ALL everybody talked about - in TIFFANY!!!!! Mon Dieu! The balance of the day was more of the same - send the “spies” into the stores, ask about sales, and come back feeling like the end of the world is coming……… don’t bother with trying to figure out if Wall st is right on this one - Main St. is telling you that it’s BAD in retail.Merry, Merry, ’Talented 

Filed by admin at December 10th, 2007 under TIF