Room for Improvement - Part I - Education

This is the start of a series of articles where I think Daffy's could easily improve. The first in this series is about brand awareness.

Part of what I've wanted to accomplish with this blog is to educate consumers out there about the brands that Daffy's carries. Most of the Italian brands they carry consistently have few, if any, retailers in the United States. Generally speaking, a store can't simply put clothes on a rack and expect people to buy them - as much as I'm far from a brand-hog, there's value behind a brand. And Daffy's would create a much more loyal customer-base if they explained to people what it is they're stocking in their stores.

Now, I realize, Daffy's is likely under contract not to advertise what it is they're selling. But, generally, those contracts don't prevent retailers from advertising within the stores themselves. One store's motto which I've always appreciated, even though I think their merchandise is simply horrific, is Syms -- "An educated consumer is our best customer." Plenty of the new sample-sale sites have two or three paragraphs about the brands they're selling, and often have videos about the lines as well telling the history and showing pieces from the label regardless of whether those particular pieces are going to be sold in the upcoming sale.

With Daffy's, however, we're lucky to be getting a little sign above some racks indicating a particular designer, but even that means little when most people who are not familiar with Daffy's would have no clue what the label is all about. But the general deal at Daffy's is -- let's just throw everything together and let the customer sift through everything. That might work at, say, a TJMaxx/Marshalls or a Ross Dress for Less, but the fact of the matter is that doing such a thing cheapens the merchandise that Daffy's gets in -- on the whole, leaving out the young mens dept. and any american closeouts the store gets in, the merchandise is high-end and retails for well beyond Daffy's prices. But there's no way that people are going to take anything seriously or pay attention to brands when the store itself doesn't take care or pride in the display or stocking.

So just a few suggestions -- have an in-store touch-screen display which links you to the websites of these designers, or at a minimum, show a video or some pictures of the merchandise or the company's line in general -- simply, let the customer get a feel for what you're selling so that the customers will develop a taste and liking for a specific brand. Another part of this equation would be to separate out the merchandise by designer/manufacturer -- Now, I realize such a thing may be hard with shirts, from, say, Mastai Feretti which contracts with literally hundreds of different labels for production, but there's no reason that merchandise cannot be separated out and labeled as 'Mastai Feretti' or 'Saitt' (MF's parent company). The value of the clothing is simply diluted when high-end merchandise from Italy is mixed in with junk from Calvin Klein, Geoffrey Beene, and the slew of other items that come in as made in China.

And I have a feeling, that if Daffy's offered brand-awareness for some of the companies they deal with, they would actually pay Daffy's to do so. Gilt-Man has been incredibly successful, in-part, because many unknown labels are using it as a launch-pad to get their brands known to the American public. But what better way for Italian brands to get recognized than in a store with over a dozen locations in the metro-NYC area. I can't imagine how many companies would kill to be exposed to the fashion-obsessed denizens of NYC, and Daffy's certainly has the retail space to provide that, and unlike Gilt, people would actually be able to see and try-on the merchandise first-hand.

The most important part about all this is quite simple, but a step which would require more effort by Daffy's than a simple marketing campaign --- EDUCATE THE EMPLOYEES - I would say about 95% of the employees who are stocking the racks and helping out customers have absolutely no clue about the merchandise the store carries - and in fact, most managers have no clue either. Honestly, the best employee in all of Daffy's is a wonderful man by the name of Andre in the 57th St. East Side store. Not only is he incredibly easy to talk to and will go out of his way to help you find something, but more importantly, he knows the ins and outs of every label carried at the store --- and he makes it his job to visit the websites of all these companies, and he even keeps up on trends in the general fashion world, outside of the obscure designers often carried at Daffy's. He is one of the few people I have met in all of the Daffy's I have visited that has anywhere near the encyclopedic knowledge as I do of the store's merchandise. The problem is that he is the exception, and not the rule. Every employee at the store should be able to explain to you the difference between Gazzarrini and Messori, and explain why shoes from Tremp are better than, say, Florsheim or Rockport.

I can't tell you how many times I've taken time out of my day to help out fellow shoppers looking for suits/shirts/pants/shoes who are clueless about what exists at Daffy's, and have only been frustrated by employees who either don't know anything about the merchandise or are simply unable to verbalize a response (no offense intended, but some of the Daffy's employees, especially in some of the NYC stores, are not exactly well-spoken). The thing is, that is not my job, and while I am happy to do it, Daffy's should be training their employees to the Andre standard, not simply giving people a job to be stockists - the merchandise is simply too good for that.

I hope part 1 of this series will be insightful, at least to the folks in Daffy's corporate, who may be looking for ways to improve the store. It is far from my job to be an educator and publicist for a company that processes over $200 Million in gross-revenue every year - thank G-d, I have a full-time job, and while I would love to be working for Daffy's if the proper circumstances arose, that is not what I get paid to do. In the meantime, I do it out of love and respect for a store that I wish did a better job itself. Part 2 coming next week -- stay tuned for merchandise updates on Monday or Tuesday.