Cherchez la femme: What Talbots could teach us
Jerry Epperson -- Furniture Today, April 22, 2007
In my next life, I want to start a furniture version of Talbots. My wonderful wife of 37 years is a Talbots fanatic and is pushing more of her friends and family towards the upscale clothing retailer.
When we travel, we plan our days to optimize Talbots visits, primarily to their outlet stores. She looks forward to our trips now, and I gladly let her spend hours in the stores because she loves it so. I usually wait in the car, go to a furniture store and wander around, or go eat.
She would rather shop at Talbots than eat! Can you imagine?
Often, she'll plan trips to Talbots with friends, her mother or our daughter. They return with multiple Talbots bags filled with all sorts of stuff. I just watch in wonder. They all are so proud of the great values they've found, and they hold up the clothes like a fisherman with a record catch.
Being fashion challenged, I admit I do not fully understand all this, but let me give a few of the reasons I think my wife loves Talbots.
First, whatever she buys at a regular Talbots store or an outlet can be exchanged for full credit at any other store. This allows her to buy everything she thinks she likes or that anyone else she knows might like, and if they don't want it (a rare occurrence), she returns it without loss.
Second, the outlet stores have last season's clothes at great prices, and older clothes at giveaway prices. Combined with true markdowns at the regular stores, the opportunity to piece together entire ensembles or matching sets at good value is greatly enhanced. Somebody almost always takes the outfits she finds.
Third, Talbots talks to my wife almost more often than I do. She gets a birthday card with a gift certificate, coupons in the mail, via e-mail, and in her credit card bill (which I choose to never, ever see). She gets notices of every sale within several hundred miles of our home, and will come up with sudden, often unexplained reasons she needs to go to Baltimore, Washington or Charlotte. We once made a trip to see her brother in Connecticut and my clients in Boston and managed to visit eight Talbots outlet stores in one week!
Fourth, her friends love her Talbots wardrobe and compliment her on it regularly. The local consignment shop in a fashionable neighborhood only accepts branded, barely used clothes, and they love her "old" Talbots stuff.
Fashion, personal contact, positive feedback from peers, value, a pleasant shopping experience and an opportunity to make it a social event — that's what's won my wife's allegiance. Can we do that in furniture?
She tells me Talbots clothes are made in the United States. If that's true, the company deserves high praise for remaining competitive and knowing their customer.
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