Shoppers seem to be getting nostalgic—favoring products which remind them of the past. Are you ready to satisfy that desire? A recent Associated Press feature points out how Home Depot threw out plans for a purple and brown 2009 Christmas in favor of the traditional red, green and gold. Saks Fifth Avenue will be featuring gingerbread houses, ball ornaments, suspenders and cufflinks.
There have always been shoppers who treasure mementoes from years ago, and it's not news that there are merchants who accommodate them with antique toasters, music tracks from old LP records reissued as MP3 downloads, and out-of-print etiquette books. In 2004, Pacific Cycle brought out a redo of the Schwinn Sting-Ray, arousing memories of a bicycle loved by kids growing up a generation before.
What is new is the more widespread draw of nostalgia. Why? I agree with the many other retailing consultants who attribute it in large part to the economic downturn. People yearn for softer times—or what they recall as being softer times. The fact is a fair amount of research indicates that when things get really tough, we often distort memories of the past to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. A New York Times piece described how Russians are reacting to their economic hammering by buying fashions with hammer-and-sickle logos to remind them of the supposedly good days of dictatorship.
So go with nostalgia, but do keep in mind the buyer psychology pendulum will swing back again. That Schwinn Sting-Ray bicycle garnered an award as the 2004 Toy Industry Association Outdoor Toy of the Year. But two years later, Dorel, the Pacific Cycles parent company by then, decided to take a loss of $3.5 million on its remaining Sting-Ray bicycle inventory in order to convince retailers to sell off the bikes.
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