If you don’t know Steve & Barry’s, you should – they sell fashionable celebrity-branded clothes at prices that are absurdly inexpensive. They will often undercut WalMart by half! And their quality is apparently good too. How do they do it? Manufacture in low labor cost countries (but others do that). Don’t advertise (that is different for a fashion retailer). Locate in underperforming malls (definitely not the Zara strategy). And an obsession with coping with razor thin profit margins. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t describe more of their operations, but they provide a nice compare and contrast with other cheap-chic purveyors, like Zara.
NY Times, May 1, 2008, TIGHTENING THE BELT, Is This the World’s Cheapest Dress
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/fashion/01STEVE.html?scp=1&sq=Steve+%26+Barry&st=nyt
