Bridging the generations with shopping

When I was younger, perhaps high school age, my mom and I took a shopping trip to the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. Some of her favorite stores were still there and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Mommy loved the old fashioned stores that had lovely rugs, served tea while you shopped and had huge powder rooms with soft upholstered furniture. After that shopping trip with her, I fell in love with that style of retail shopping experience too.

I don’t keep up with economic indicators, vis-à-vis the impact of unemployment and recession to privately-owned retailers.

However, in 2008, I started noticing some changes.

One particular day, shortly after Thanksgiving, I was doing some Christmas shopping and visited a couple of well established clothing boutiques in Houston. At Kathryn Risley’s shop I noticed that the inventory appeared very sparse, particularly given the time of year. However, I was fortunate enough to find a lovely top for my mom, on a mark-down rack, so I made my purchase and counted my blessings. Earlier that day, at Etui, another favorite just down the street, I had overheard one of the staff members at the shop telling a customer that they hadn’t observed any change to their customer’s spending habits, despite all the reports of economic doom and gloom.

Etui is located in an upscale urban neighborhood, but their merchandise is very reasonably priced. Well, not priced like TJ Maxx, but you know, not like the privately owned boutiques on Chicago’s famed Oak Street either.

It sounded like their client base was loyal enough and financially secure enough to continue spending money on clothing and accessories.

I was relieved to hear this news. While I’m certainly far from an avid shopper, I love pretty clothing and accessories and love knowing that there are a few places where I am confident I can locate completely unique, quality garments in a comfortable, but stimulating atmosphere at a price point that works within my budget.

Elizabeth’s Boutique in The Woodlands falls in this category too. I had been fortunate enough to time my last couple of visits to this lovely store to take advantage of an after-season clearance. But new inventory was still plentiful. My optimism remained high. These boutiques gave me the same feeling of that shopping experience with my mom some 30 years ago.

Kathryn Risley sent an email in early spring 2009, saying that she had closed her store and was launching a new fashion venture in an online space.

Six or seven months later, I received an email from Etui indicating that they were announcing a new fashion partner that was going to share their retail space. Hmmm. It didn’t lure me in, but I was hopeful their resourcefulness would carry them through the apparent financial difficulties creeping into even these businesses with a “loyal” customer base.

About four weeks ago, I noticed a “Sale” banner at Elizabeth’s Boutique indicating they were going out of business.

Then today another email arrived from Etui. They are closing their doors after almost 30 years.

I have to admit, it bothers me. I don’t know if shopping at independent retailers has been largely replaced by shopping online. Perhaps Kathryn Risley knows. Perhaps permanent changes in human behavior have been established, driven by technology, fuel cost and basic economics.

But on the eve of Mother’s Day, this news has extinguished the possibility of participating in an experience that always made me feel like my mother’s daughter.

Chick flick

I’m a chick flick sort of girl. I like movies where the central themes are about building human relationships and making peace with yourself. If the characters are somewhat fashion minded with great shoes and accessories, that’s a big plus. I like intelligent dialog, sweet sentimentality and a good, old-fashioned Hollywood happy ending (sniffle, sniffle).

After all, with the price of movies these days ($19 for two tickets before 5pm thank you very much and $5 for a small popcorn) I don’t need to add an artificial layer of stress to my current existence. I don’t want anxiety, loud bangs, aggressive personalities or dark suspense. I’d be emotionally wiped out by the time the movie is over.

So, dear filmmakers, I realize I might be among a rapidly declining demographic, but please keep making chick movies. Thank you.

Science of the survey

I participated in an employee survey today. Advance notice encouraging my participation arrived in my email inbox last week. And I received another reminder on the daily Employee News link too. So I went ahead and opened the link first thing this morning with the best intentions of contributing to the collective knowledge that is our institutional workforce, at least, in terms of this survey.

Truth is, I’m more than a bit dubious about surveys. Most surveys provide an answer array to allow respondents to shade their answers from middle-of-the-road, to extreme. I tend to be a middle-of-the-road girl, regardless of the relative width of the survey’s answer array. I figure that even if I had a single isolated negative experience pertaining to a certain question, I’ve also had at least one good experience, so in the end, it pretty much all averages out. But some people like to click the extreme buttons. So I am not sure how the answers are compiled in a way that recognizes and accommodates the variations in the answering style of the respondents. I can't help wondering about things like this.

I’m also curious about what the survey is attempting to accomplish. I know there is a method to survey design such that the assembled responses boil down to a set of basic feedback indicators. If the indicator is below expectations, then the framework of the survey will also isolate the offending problem area. The science of survey building is as mysterious as it is interesting, at least from my own perspective.

Today’s survey seemed to be about employee satisfaction and retention. Half the questions seemed to be lifted from the standard employee satisfaction survey menu, but the other half were new. They came from the exotic Dim Sum style menu of hypothetical HR benefits, programs and compensation packages. More than a little complex and more than a little tiresome to wade through. This was, after all, purely hypothetical. I found myself clicking, clicking, clicking, wondering if I had stumbled into an endless survey loop or if they were merely trick questions.

Then, just like that, it was over. Until next year.

The frugal consumer: admirable or merely annoying?

While I do not watch television much (honest statement), when I do, it seems that I pay slightly more attention to the commercials than the programming. It might have something to do with my weak attention span…who knows.

I noticed an advertisement by the fast-food empire, McDonald’s, that features a young couple. The male half of the couple is ultra-frugal and over the span of 10 seconds or so he demonstrates to his understanding, but more common-sense wife, that he is contributing to the household economy through his frugal endeavors. One of these endeavors involves a large homemade contraption to squeeze the last droplet of toothpaste out of the tube. The wife, on the other hand, takes frugal matters into her own hands by simply picking up lunch at McDonald’s. Happy ending, fade to jingle.

I have seen the commercial twice and the first time did not realize that it was a McDonald’s commercial because I was so consumed by absorbing the husband’s economical creativity. He is indeed a man after my own heart. I am a frugal person myself. Genetically programmed that way -- thank you very much daddy.

But clearly, this commercial is no-so-gently poking fun at the frugal people of the world as evidenced by its depiction of one of the husband’s “getting-my-money’s-worth” projects gone badly awry.

Now, I can totally relate to getting the last droplet of any product out of its bottle. I realize that I may be setting myself up for ridicule, but this is my true confession. I routinely swish water in the bottom of shampoo bottles to get the last of the shampoo before the bottle goes into the recycling bin. In my estimation, I get 4 additional full lathers. I swish water in the bottom of the laundry detergent bottles to make use of the last of that product, producing one or two basins full of soapy water for my delicate hand wash. I flatten toothpaste tubes with the back of my toothbrush to push the gel all the way to the top and don’t throw away the tube until it is beyond my ability to squeeze. It gives me an extra 5-6 toothpaste squeezes. Getting the last of the skin lotion out of the bottle is somewhat aggravating, but in my experience, there is about 2 weeks worth of product remaining after the first sign that the bottle is “empty” that I can coax out with gravity and a little shaking.

Cristy and I are on opposite poles of this spectrum. Actually, I’m at the extreme end of the spectrum and she’s somewhere in the middle. But she tolerates my frugal behavior, precisely like the understanding wife in the McDonald’s commercial. I wonder if my obsessive attention to economy is as ridiculous as the commercial makes it seem? It’s doubtful that I’ll change anytime soon.