California Apparel News

Sears’ acquisition of catalog and online apparel retailer Lands’ End is expected to close by end of month for a reported $1.98 billion. This represents an abrupt about-face for Sears, which abandoned its legendary catalog business a few years back when the red ink began to flow.

Sears isn’t saying exactly how the acquisition fits into its overall corporate strategy, but analysts are speculating that Sears’ lackluster performance online, especially on the apparel side, will be greatly enhanced by the skills and methodology that built Lands’ End’s exceptional online presence since the early days of the Web way back in 1995.

“Lands’ End’s skill in product development, online channels and direct-to-consumer sales is an asset to Sears,” said analyst Kevin Murphy of Gartner/G2 Research in a recent report.

“Sears certainly considered all the different benefits that Lands’ End would bring, and our experience and success online was among them,” said Lands’ End spokeswoman Emily C. Leuthner in E-Commerce Times last month.

Indeed, Lands’ End has a history of online risk-taking with software innovations that in some cases pre-dated—and outperformed—even such far-out experiments as the colossal Boo.com, which ultimately met with failure.

Will Sears embrace this spirited attitude that so aggressively pulled Lands’ End ahead while so many others fell apart? Will Sears avoid alienating Lands’ End’s loyal customer base?

There is at least one big goof Sears dare not repeat and that is to spoil the respected brand identity of Lands’ End in much the same manner as Federated Stores did with the once-vibrant low-end cataloger FingerHut. As we recently saw, FingerHut, acquired by Federated in 1999 for $1.7 billion, was swiftly run into the ground. Any number of analysts say it was due to a lack of Federated’s appreciation for Web-savvy marketing and CRM (customer relations management) software innovations. The result: FingerHut is now offline. R.I.P.

Site Review: The View From Poland

A snappy new site from Poland at www.fashionet.pl offers a well-designed portal for information about the textile and apparel industries throughout Europe. A wealth of economic news and trends—as well as significant contacts for companies throughout Europe—are featured, in four languages.

Fueled by a young team of editors, writers and Web designers based in Warsaw, this crisp and easy-to-navigate site looks at the European scene from a fresh perspective (many believe the EU will include Poland as early as 2004). It focuses on innovation, including interviews with key industry leaders and examinations of new fashion trends.

We found its story on the new vintage fashion trend in Europe (which it attributes to having originated in America) to be one among many well-written essays. For a comprehensive yet concise grasp of Europe’s textile and fashion businesses, start here, and be sure to locate the tiny little British flag in the upper corner of the home page—otherwise, you’ll be reading Polish by default.