Patrice Riemens on Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:47:22 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Temporary ... Shopping Zones! |
Fans of Thomas Frank (or is it the other way round? ;-), rejoice! There is really no end to capitalism's recuperative prowess: ------------------------- Commes des Garcons Guerilla Store The ever-inventive and playful Rei Kawakubo's latest probe into the bleeding edge of the buying psyche. She's just opened this store in Berlin, Germany. It's the first example of provisional retailing by an established fashion house: the store plans to close in one year, even if it's making money. Instead of spending millions to build or renovate a building, Comme des Garcons spent just $2,500 to fix up a former bookshop in the historic Mitte district. Because the company doesn't plan to stay long in the 700-foot-square space, it didn't bother to remove the name of the previous tenant from the windows. Advertising consisted of 600 posters placed around the city, and word of mouth. Said Adrian Joffe, who conceived the store with his wife and partner Rei Kawakubo, "Of course it seems outrageous to close something once it becomes a success, and I think we will be successful." Of course, it helps to have a story about your venture appear on the front page of the New York Times, as this one did. Joffe continued, "To be creative at anything takes an unbelievable amount of energy, and the minute you start to feel content with your success is when you lose it. You don't want to get too comfortable." All 20 stores the company plans to open within the next year, including one in Brooklyn, will adopt the same guerilla strategy, disappearing after a year. The Comme des Garcons Guerilla Store flouts conventional wisdom in almost every way. Said Nancy Koehn, a professor at Harvard Business School, "Guerilla marketing is the wave of the future. Red Bull and Trader Joe's have built their followings by word of mouth." The sense in the fashion industry that nothing lasts for long has become more and more apparent. Tom Ford, whose career at Gucci will end next month, was asked recently if he thought people would remember him for his work there. "They will forget," he said with a snap of his fingers. "This is today. This is the world. Six months, a year, two years. Whatever happens goes away." For years, corporations have recognized that "the medium is the message." But as the sheer glut of information clogs up the sensory channels, making traditional news media less effective - American consumers are bombarded with 750,000 individual advertisements a year - marketing experts say how a product is sold can break through the clutter. Said Seth Matlins, a branding expert, "What you'll see is that distribution will become the message." Joffe and Kawakubo noted when they visited Berlin last summer that young consumers attitudes are shifting radically: content and product now count for more than image. Their new store, whose monthly rent is $700, gives Commes des Garcons an inexpensive way to channel avant garde pieces from the runway, sell off clothes from past seasons, and reduce inventory. Said Matlins, the branding expert, "One of the things we're seeing with kids is how much they're buying from eBay." Claudia Skoda, a knitwear designer shopping at the Guerilla Store, said, "I think people are tired of things you can get everywhere in the world." bookofjoe's World Tour 2004 will be visiting this store. No question it's filled with potential joeheads, joebabes, and joesluts. -------------- (from the http://www.bookofjoe.com blog (cached by Google), March 10 entry - but I saw it first (sic) in Le Monde dated Feb 26... # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net