Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 16, 1992 TAG: 9202140459
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Sandra Brown Kelly
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
RETAILERS REACHING A CROSSROADS
On a recent Saturday, Sidney Weinstein walked through his office-warehouse complex near Roanoke's Regional Airport.Empty cubicles and exposed wiring formerly connected to computer terminals spoke to the change that has come to the Sidney's womens apparel shops stores since Weinstein sought bankruptcy reorganization and closed 30 of his 50 stores.
The trimming also involved returning the headquarters to what years ago was the main Sidney's store, on Jefferson Street in the heart of downtown Roanoke.
Problems of the Sidney's stores are not peculiar to the Roanoke second-generation apparel merchant. A "mean streets" label usually associated with crime is equally good language for today's retail atmosphere.
This industry that looks like fun - and is - may be the most demanding of all the ways to make a living. Competition, a reluctant, sometimes unforgiving consumer and the pressure to make a healthy profit are pummeling it.
In recent weeks, I have taken on a new assignment that includes writing about retail. It's a little like coming home.
But, just a little.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, I worked in retail, at a lakeside snackbar, a furniture store, a department store and a drugstore. I know what T.C. Leggett meant when he reminisced at last year's staff Christmas breakfast about what his dad would do if he spotted a clerk leaning on a counter in one of the family's department stores.
His dad would ask if the store had a "new mannequin."
Clerks did not lean at Leggett in 1961. They stayed alert and lively looking.
I know this, from working a holiday stint at the downtown Roanoke Leggett store that disappeared as suburban malls proliferated.
Some of the today's players were also around then, like Weinstein and Chip Lazarus, president of the Lazarus stores, the Heironimus department store and Grand Piano furniture people. But they face new players and new ways to play.
There may be only one lasting truism in retailing: It's driven by fashion and fad and whim purchases.
If only necessities were sold, the Roanoke Valley wouldn't need its more than 1,400 retail stores.
But, the market is rearranging itself, simultaneously moving in opposite directions: toward super-large discount store and also toward the small specialty shop: Sam's Wholesale Club and Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea, for example.
The competition is fierce. The shopper isn't just happy to find a bargain, but expects to.
When the Sidney's downtown store was the "in place" for career women to shop, Weinstein also operated "Little Sidney's" just down the street. It had a wonderful bargain basement where out-of-season designer dresses went for a pittance.
Now, thanks to manufacturers' outlet stores and other discounters, shoppers know they can get designer clothes for less, even in season. And not just designer clothes, but furniture and office supplies and shoes and . . . It all depends on where you shop.
The same weekend I visited with Weinstein, I dropped in on the Stanley Furniture Outlet, Sam's Clothing and Sam's Wholesale Club, all in Towne Square Shopping Center near the airport.
These are the new dudes of retailing who are raising today's challenges:
How can a full-price men's clothing shop compete with a place that sells blazers, some flawless in construction, for $39, and also offers alterations?
Is a shopper going to pay $150 for a coffee table if a similar item can be bought for $69?
Or why pay a grocery chain $4.95 for a dozen when the wholesale outlet has 48-to-60 count box for about $14?
The answers? We don't know yet.
Sandra Brown Kelly covers retailing and consumer-related issues for the Roanoke Times & World-News.