Beware Of Such A Tricky Trick: Outlets Sells Not Factory Outlets.

"To return home to send gifts, to go Woodbury Outlets " This is a must for many Chinese friends now when they arrive in New York. Just like in the middle of 1990s, when I first moved to the United States, I was taken by my early friends to two places to see the face of Capitalism: one is the Atlantic gambling city, the other is called outlets. At that time, I really thought that outlets was a place name. Later, it was known that it was a business mode. Friends interpreted it as a "factory outlet store". The same thing as the same brand on Manhattan Island, the price was much cheaper. This sounds exciting and enjoyable.

On the first trip to outlets, I bought a khaki Polo. Jacket It costs $more than 50, which is at least half cheaper than the same jacket in RalphLauren flagship store in Fifth Avenue, Manhattan. At that time, although poor students, can see such a good deal can not help but move.

Just that jacket bought home, I hesitated again, so I took the regularstore on Fifth Avenue to retreat. I don't think so. The customer service officer looked at it and said, "do you buy it from outlets?" I was very surprised at his eyesight. He hesitated repeatedly, as if unwilling to hurt my self-esteem. But he took a jacket from a shop and explained to me, "you can see by comparison that our jacket and outlets are different." Is that right? I asked rhetorical questions half and half. Outlets is not selling the same thing as regular shops as advertised, but because the lack of intermediate links lowers prices.

This vague doubt came back to me shortly after my work. The first company I worked for was 100 years old. Underwear The most important order for brand Maidenform is cotton embroidery. pajamas 。 But after the first season, I searched all over the island department store and did not find my design. Ask the boss to know that our pajamas were sold only in Maidenform outlets, that is to say, they will not appear in the regular shop. Outlets is really not "factory direct sale".

A few years later, I joined a company that provided design and production for a famous underwear designer brand in New York. The designer often brings cooperation projects designed for Saks Fifth Avenue outlets.

She usually has the following requirements for this set of designs: to sell her to Saks Fifth Avenue department store's design, that is, from color to material, it has the recognition degree of its seasonal brand, but it must not be exactly the same; of course, more importantly, the retail price is cheaper. All in all, she hopes that outlets customers can identify her brand and stimulate her desire to buy because the price is lower than that of Fifth Avenue.

So this is the truth of outlets. Although I do occasionally sell a small quantity of regular stores, for example, I have scouring a Ralph Lauren purple leather jacket at 1/8 of the price, but most of the goods on its shelves are bought by independent buyers through the outlets standard.

A friend of mine heard that I was going to write outlets, shaking my head and asking, what's the point? Some people just like those big logo, no matter what the truth is, they will still persist. As long as there is such a persistence, outlets will have the soil of existence.

That's a good idea. But everyone has the right to know the truth and the freedom to choose the truth. The truth of Outlets is not only the truth of outlets, but also the truth of consumer psychology. It is the truth of global luxury brands, that is, the truth of capital operation market.

Seventeen when I first arrived in New York eight years ago, there was only the US brand in the outlets store nearby. Coach and CalvinKlein were a great role. Nike, Ann Taylor, J. Crew, Gap and other mid-range goods definitely occupied the world. Until the turn of the new century, European brands began to pour in.

This is exactly the basic rhythm of the "democratization revival" of the global luxury brands. This democratization has been interpreted by some European consortia as giving everyone the right and possibility to enjoy luxuries. They bought or embezzled almost all the old family style small workshops in Europe, and then, through various propaganda and marketing methods, achieved the unprecedented benefits by stratification or even low level of the minority luxury goods industry. It has to be said that the outlets stores in the United States really provide a good place for such democratization. It uses commercial psychology to play commercial games with people's love of famous brands and the advantages of being cheap. It helps these consortia to easily occupy the market space that should belong to more small and medium-sized companies.

However, the market is so large that the more space we occupy by the more striking logo, the more we can enjoy the freedom of letting flowers bloom, the more we sacrifice ourselves. It is the old family style workshop that we have left in Europe that has lost the independence, individuality and quality that they have always been adhering to. So we can only enjoy the same, monotonous and mediocrity. We have compressed the living space of many independent designers and craftsmen to almost zero, so we no longer have the chance to touch innovation and even perceive the ability of innovation. When the luxury brands are going downhill, the local mid-range brands will inevitably become "rubbish". Therefore, no matter producers or consumers, we can only live in more and more garbage dumps.