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Plain Talk
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Whoever Would Have Thought that Filene’s Basement And Syms Would Go Out of Business?
by Rick Segel Being brought up in Boston, we took the legendary Filene’s Basement for granted. I remember as a small child my Auntie Bea and her friends would travel into Boston by public transportation which meant traveling on a bus and an underground train. The ride in was a challenge because they would leave early in the morning and be commuting with all the people who worked in Boston. The ride back was even worse because they had to take all of their purchases in bags on the train and bus. This was a ritual that would be repeated at least once or twice every month. When I got old enough to start traveling outside of New England I was amazed how many people would ask about Filene’s Basement. Filene’s Basement had an automatic markdown pricing guarantee that insured merchandise would be moving out of that store faster than any other retailer. I don’t recall the exact terms but the merchandise was given to charity after I believe was 5 weeks on the selling floor. One of the reasons why Filene’s Basement was so well known country and worldwide was because they would buy out complete inventories of major department stores. At one point that type of merchandise would be referred to by other retailers as merchandise no one wanted. Filene’s Basement was known worldwide for their bridal gown sale. It came to be known as the “running of the brides.” People would fly in from other parts of the country just to go to this sale. Brides would join forces with their bridal party in a military type style to strategically snag that wanted piece of merchandise. People would be lined up the night before just to go to this sale. So what went wrong? How could a store with that type of reputation falter? Before we get to that, understand that Filene’s Basement was purchased by another legendary retailer, Syms. Their slogan stated “where the educated consumer is our best customer.” You would see both the father and daughter constantly wherever a Syms was located and they would be talking about educated consumers. So what happened? There will be plenty of post mortems as to the shortcomings of the management and how they did this and didn’t do that. Let’s not look at it from a retailer’s point of view. Instead let’s look at it from the customer’s point of view. The real lesson to learn was that they were no longer relevant in today’s marketplace. Certainly a bridal event as legendary as “the running of the brides” at Filene’s Basement will probably be sold off as an asset as part of the brand by a bankruptcy court. Someone will buy that name and make some money for a few years but the Filene’s Basement name/brand that was once featured on 20/20 by Barbara Walters was named the second biggest tourist attraction in Boston. It has been synonymous with the city since 1911 but is probably worthless. The Syms brand that they spent millions of dollars on developing is also probably worthless because neither brand means or represents anything in the mind of today’s shopper. What their founders did to make these stores great includes a sense of adventure, a spirit, not being afraid to do something different and having the belief in their convictions to dare enough to do that different thing. Many people will write that the reason why these stores died was because they owned the market in tailored clothing. Yes, that is true, but people are not wearing suits and tailored clothing the way they once did. Instead of trying to develop new markets, they waited for their market to return. I have two comments to make. First, saddle shoes are coming back but I’m not going to buy a pair on sale now and wait for their return. Second, when the horse is dead you need to get off of it. It was time to reinvent yourself to do what your founders did to make it a leader rather than a follower. Are you waiting for your market to return or are you creating a new market? I had a discussion with an older fellow who said “America is going to pot – we don’t make anything anymore.” My response to him is “your grandchildren will be working in fields that haven’t even been created yet.” Whoever thought that people would be making a living from EBay or Google or a start-up company like Apple? Don’t stop the world because you want to get off, get into the world because you want to go for the ride of your life. When people hear that Filene’s and Syms went out of business they say “isn’t that too bad.” Don’t have them say it about you.
Rick Segel can be reached at: |
