Sophisticated Sell

By: Polly LaBarreWed Dec 19, 2007 at 12:37 AM

Why are so many women so passionate about shopping at Anthropologie? Because Glen Senk and his colleagues aren't just selling clothes and furnishings. They're selling a sense of adventure and originality -- and the promise of self-discovery. A field report from the frontier of retail.

Be Cheap Unbridled creativity and strict cost control are by no means mutually exclusive concepts. Anthropologie has always favored humble, recycled, and natural materials. Some of the store's most striking visual effects have been crafted out of mundane materials. Last season, the visual team took the idea to new levels of austerity when it created window displays using only big pieces of butcher paper, scissors, and a needle and thread. The windows featured paper cutouts of some striking silhouettes with detailing from that season's collection. The backdrop was a big sheet of butcher paper covered in hand-written poetry. People called from all over the country to see if they could buy the cutouts.

Sidebar: Talk Like an Anthropologist

Retailers speak a highly technical language full of obscure terms and acronyms: "open to buy," "receipt flow," "SKU." Anthropologie's unique approach translates to its vocabulary. Explanations of three critical terms:

Happy Clothes When you boil it down, Anthropologie's philosophy is, "Our customer wants happy clothes." According to Wendy Wurtzburger, head merchant for women's apparel and accessories, happy clothes are first and foremost colorful, pretty, and feminine. (A happy look for fall would be "colors that are unexpected for the season, like yellow and pink in a vintage-looking sweater.") Sad clothes, by contrast, tend to come in darker colors and have sharp, edgy shapes. "We've learned to steer clear of sad clothing in sophisticated darker colors and strange new edgy shapes," says Wurtzburger. "Our experience is that sad clothes end up on the markdown rack."