Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards

Lifestyle Journalism Awards

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The Darrell Sifford Memorial Prize in Journalism

Darrell Sifford BJ '53

The Wall Street Journal

WEEKEND JOURNAL: Fashion: The T-Shirt You Can't Get
By Eileen Daspin
10 October 2003
Copyright © 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Reprinted by permission.

Shoppers are used to waiting lists for items like Hermes bags. But the practice is trickling down to blue jeans, Banana Republic jackets, even tube socks. Eileen Daspin on a risky new marketing move.

STACY NEUMAN has gotten used to signing onto waiting lists for labels like Louis Vuitton. But recently, the 44-year-old St. Louis caterer had to cool her heels at a place she never expected: Banana Republic, which had a three-week wait for a simple $198 jacket."I said, `I'll be wearing fur by then,' " says Ms. Neuman. "I wanted to be wearing it tomorrow."

Coming to a chain near you: the wait list. Long associated with $5,000 handbags and $10,000 watches, waiting lists for "out-of-stock" items are trickling down the fashion ladder to cheaper, mass-market brands. At the Scoop chain in New York and Florida, more than 200 people are waiting for T-shirts alone (some clingy $50 numbers from C & C California), with an additional 120 on tap for the newest pair of Seven Jeans. Club Monaco, which recently introduced waiting lists at its biggest stores, is taking numbers for moderately priced peacoats. And those trucker hats that were all the rage last summer? Their maker, Von Dutch, just asked retailers to almost double the price ($85) to make them more desirable.

Of course, trendsetters have been lining up for the lastest fashions for years, but they've usually been expensive numbers like Gucci's $3,500 hippie jeans from a few seasons ago, or this fall's $980 pink "Hobo" bag by Jimmy Choo. Now, analysts say it's happening with everyday items at everyday stores, from jogging outfits at Nordstrom to $24 tube socks by Juicy Couture at some California boutiques.

Some of this is the by-product of the fickle economy, which has forced both makers and retailers to continue scaling back on production and orders. Indeed, even with retail sales up about 3% this year, inventories are still down about 5%, says Phil Kowalczyk, an analyst with Kurt Salmon Associates. In this environment, even a short-lived buying frenzy can stir up a fashion shortage. But increasingly, wait lists have also become part of a marketing plan, managed carefully by big and small players. Using everything from glossy magazines to celebrities, retailers and makers drum up interest for certain fashions -- then make a point of keeping production low.

For its part, Banana Republic says it orchestrated its own campaign for that $198 jacket Ms. Neuman wanted. Hoping to make the item "a fashion moment," the company featured it heavily in its fall-advertising campaign and promoted it with fashion glossies. Then it limited its shipments -- to just 5,000 jackets, no more than half the normal run for such a product. The result: a flurry of wait lists, which didn't move the company to reorder. "When we sell out, we sell out," says Deborah Lloyd, Banana Republic's executive vice president for product design and development. "It adds to the allure."

There is a risk to the wait-list strategy. Impatient customers can always buy something else from a competitor, and some stores are already upset at makers that don't respond to wait lists. But there's an even bigger concern in the industry: that too many wait lists will take away the very specialness the concept implies. "When it's one, two and three people doing it, it's an exclusive club," says Marshal Cohen, an analyst with market researchers NPD Group. "But when it's national chains, it loses the appeal."

Still, retailers say the practice is only likely to grow for now because waiting lists seem to have crossed the line into a marketing tool for all sorts of industries. This year, Ford Motor had a list for a new Mazda, while the New York Jets briefly tried charging fans $50 just to keep their place on waiting lists for season tickets. What's more, shoppers today seem used to them, like Kiwon Standen, a restaurant director who's on waiting lists for three products, including a $75 bottle of face cream (Alchemy by Remede) and a Luella Bartlett purse. She says she's not sure she wants the handbag, but signed up "because you can't get your hands on it."

In the past, some of the most fabled fashion waiting lists have sprung from the French design house Hermes, which makes both the Birkin bag -- a pocketbook designed for actress Jane Birkin in 1984 that now costs $5,900 and up -- and the Kelly bag, a $5,500-and-up model popularized by Grace Kelly in the 1950s. The lists for those purses were so long that the company "closed" them. Since the mid-'90s, when Prada and others started taking names for customers hoping to buy the look of the moment -- often kept in special notebooks -- waiting lists have become a fixed part of the luxury fashion scene.

Now, retailers and makers in the middle of the market are getting into the game with some of the same word-of-mouth tactics that made the luxury goods so popular. Some of these firms say they don't even need advertising if they can place the product with enough influential editors, shops and A-list celebrities. One popular move: handing out a limited number of a new fashion well before they're even produced. "I had people saying `I want it I want it I want it,'" says Jennie Dietch, a spokeswoman for Joie, a New York jeans maker that has retailers waitlisting a $32 "Fashion Stinks" T-shirt that hit stores this week.

In Santa Barbara, Calif., a store called Blue Bee says it noticed a picture of Cameron Diaz wearing a new $168 Hello Kitty necklace. Before the necklace was even out, the store set up a display of the picture, sparking buzz and a wait list of 20 buyers, "It created desire," says co-owner Marty Bebout. Paper, Denim & Cloth, a trendy jeans maker, just launched a 300-per style special collection (salient feature: made from hand-picked cotton) and a "secret link" on its Web site to promote the hard-to-find models. Le Sportsac, the casual-handbag maker, is pushing the "limited edition" concept and making purses with rocker Gwen Stefani and fur-fashion line J. Mendel.

The trucker-cap outfit, Von Dutch, has taken this all a step further. Ever since singer Justin Timberlake started wearing one of its white caps, the hats, produced in a raft of colors, have been on waiting lists around the country. Yet instead of making the in-demand colors (like white or pink) more available, Von Dutch upped the price and stuck with a policy of limited color runs. "We want to become more exclusive," says spokeswoman Caroline Rothwell.

All this maneuvering, of course, has drawn its critics. Retailers are already complaining that wait lists are creating image and hype at the expense of sales. They don't like telling customers to wait -- not to mention being embarrassed that they can't wrangle hot items. Smaller outfits have their own set of beefs, mostly that supertrendy brands will drop them when bigger, more prestigious retailers come along.

Even if they're more used to the practice, shoppers can grow weary of the practice, too, especially when the items they want come only after they're out of date. When Nicole Richard sees some popular brands wait-listed, she does what retailers fear -- moves on to another item or looks for it in another store. "What's the point?" asks the 27-year-old in Royal Oak, Mich. For Ms. Neuman in St. Louis, the issue is attitude. When she recently tried to buy a stylish $400 handbag at Saks, she says the store told her the waiting list had been closed at 200 names. It would be available in the spring again -- at a 5% premium.

"It blew my mind," says Ms. Neuman. "How about 'Let's make more and bring down the price so everyone can get one?' " Saks spokeswoman Laurie Rhodes says the store would have liked more of the purses: "We could have sold all we had."

But for now retailers and makers say they're learning how to manage most wait-list woes. Hot maker Juicy Couture, for example, says the firm did just go back to the looms with one of the most in-demand items, an $84 baby-doll dress. "We try to keep our customers hungry, but that one we had to recut," says Juicy co-founder Pamela Skiast Levy. "People just kept calling."