rethinking retail

It’s 1987. BEFORE the internet dominated shopping. However, we felt the retail landscape changing, which we explained in the ad copy. We were looking for a company leader who felt the same things.

That led us to run two ads in Women’s Wear Daily. Brash statements, which we felt deeply, but the world had not yet had the same realization. And, I’ve got to say…fashion retailers had their eye more on beating LY sales than seeing into the future. 

Two ads we ran in 1987, in Women’s Wear Daily.

What could we do with these beliefs? We created the MYA Store concept link to post which was one way of looking at retail in a different way. But it was still almost impossible to get a company leader to go all in.

What even we didn’t see, at least in its magnitude was the INTERNET. It took several years for it to catch on, but by 2005 the trend was clear, and rising (dramatically) every year. That got people scrambling, and experimenting all along the way.

The ironic thing is that I never got to address this seismic shift in retailing, except to watch it from the sidelines. Deborah’s sudden death, in 2005, shifted my life entirely, as characterized by the split between chapter’s 8 and 9. (More on that in a later post.)

We saw all this coming, only 15 years or so too early. Too early to get significant support, and even too early to remember I said it way back…when????