Category: retail

New York, retail, thanksgiving

On NYC: My first grown-up Thanksgiving

Christa Avampato

This year is the first time that I am ever spending Thanksgiving away from my family. They are all sunning themselves in Florida, and oddly enough, I am sunning myself on the Upper Westside of Manhattan. It’s as warm here as it is in Florida. Over 60 degrees tomorrow, and green leaves abound in Riverside Park, a.k.a my park.

While I miss the fam and their always crazy antics, I am thankful for not having to fly to my turkey this year. I’ll be able to sleep late tomorrow, watch the parade on TV (despite the fact that it rolls past me several blocks to the east – too crowded and I don’t think anyone wants me showing up on Central Park West in my jammies), and then stroll up about 10 blocks around 4pm to my friend, Lisa’s, for a lovely catered dinner devoid of stress. I have been looking forward to this for months.

The real reason I remain here at the heart of consumerism is because at 4:45am on Friday I will be surrounded by frantic shoppers at our Times Square store. To be fair, I volunteered for this, choosing the location and the time. And to be honest, I am looking forward to it. A friend at work today told me I should make it a party. Whoop it up! Have some fun! Pretend everyone in the store is my best friend. I like this idea.

Truth be told, I have never set foot in a store on Black Friday. I’m beginning to wonder if I am agoraphobic. Just thinking about the crowds is making me nervous. The idea of getting up, standing in line at an ungodly hour, all to save a few bucks makes me scratch my head. Why do people do this?

By nature I am obsessed with comparison shopping. Now being in retail, that obsession is even more heightened. It turns out that you don’t just save a few bucks on Black Friday. You save a boatload of bucks! Some of these deals are unbelievable. Plus this year there are added on-line sales that are released on Thanksgiving night. You’d think some of these places were giving it away. It’s incredible.

So while I wish I was chowing down on turkey with my lovely, though exceedingly dysfunctional, family and playing with Sebastian, my sister’s adorable daschund puppy, I’ll settle for the magic of NYC, not flying on the busiest travel day of the year, and Friday morning embedded with my fellow bargain-hunters. I’m sure that 4:45 Friday morning will be just the beginning of a long list of blog post topics from the front.

Until then, I wish you a safe, happy, and relaxing holiday wherever you find your turkey.

happiness, moving, New York, retail

On Happiness: Giving it Away

Christa Avampato

This weekend, a friend of mine moved out of her apartment of ten years. Messy roommate situation, messy subtler situation. She looked around her boxed up apartment to find almost 100 boxes, furniture in various conditions, much of her from her childhood home. She lost both her parents at a young age. She has worked so hard to get her life in order, to find her place in the world. She is one of the bravest people I know.

And even with so much courage, so much meditation on detaching herself from worldly possessions for the sake of lasting happiness, she is having a tough time letting go. Despite the fact that she is thrilled to be saving money, time, and effort by cleaning out many of these remaining remnants of her past, she is finding that letting go is in many ways just as painful as hanging on.

In the U.S., we are criticized as a nation of consumers, pack rats, too few people with too much stuff. I agree with that to an extent, except when the possessions we have really stand for a diary, a journal of where we’ve been and who’s played a part. My friend isn’t just letting of materials items; in a very really sense she is putting to rest a part of her life gone by. Giving up what’s been, what’s defined her, for the sake of what could be. It’s the gamble of a lifetime, literally.

We forget – details, events, emotions. Our minds have a wonderful way of glossing over many awful experiences, dulling the pain, or shock, or discomfort so that we can move forward. Friends and family remind us, and we keep mementos of past experiences to memorialize them. By giving away these mementos, we are not only giving away possessions, but also giving away the ability to recall the details down the road. We are losing a part of ourselves.

And we have to. We can’t possibly hang on to all of it. A lifetime holds so many things, people, occurrences. We have to assume the responsibility of editing our lives – of culling out the things that matter most from the great cumulative mass of living. It is the toughest job we will ever do. In seemingly simple acts like giving away furniture, we are choosing how to remember our lives and how to we will be remembered by others. As nice as a clean slate sounds, there is a period of mourning that happens in the cleansing.

My friend walked me to the subway Saturday afternoon after we spent a good couple of hours hashing through this idea of letting go. All I could do was give her two giant hugs, promise her my positive energy, and assure her that the next chapter would be an adventure. I am sure she walked away teary-eyed. I did, too. It’s part of the cleansing – a clean slate is on the way.

environment, green, innovation, product, retail

Innovation: Laundry minus the water

Christa Avampato

I love smart products – ones designed to fit my crazy life’s schedule, make my days a bit easier, and make me feel good while using them. For example, I don’t like house work. I do it, and the only thing I ever like about it is how it looks when I’m all done. So if a product quickly gets me through the pieces I don’t like, I’m all for it. I’ve got places to be…

Voila – Swash! P&G developed a “smoothing” spray for people like me – I’m an infamous re-wearer. I’d prefer to wear my jeans about 20 times before I wash them. I don’t because they just feel kind of used after just a couple wears. Same with heavy sweaters. With Swash I can get rid of stains, odors, and wrinkles with a few sprays of the can. No water required. And even better, the can is made of recycled aluminum and can be recycled again.

Check it out at http://www.swashitout.com

gifts, retail

Granting wishes

Christa Avampato

The season of massive gift giving has arrived! And with the season comes the litany of holiday TV commercials. It’s tough for retailers to cut through with a unique message, though some are doing just that. I saw one this morning that made me reconsider the list I’ll be checking twice. In the past, we’ve focused so much on getting gifts for people, the focus being the product we wrap up in shiny paper.

As retailers shift their business model to dually focus on the product and the experience of purchasing the product, consumers also seem to be focused on not just giving a gift but creating an experience for the recipient. Granting a wish.

We do put ourselves into the frenzy of mass purchasing – pictures of consumers dashing into retailer doors that open at 6:00am or earlier. But if we take a look back, and think about someone as a whole person, and find a way to give them something that’s not just a box with a bow on it. One of these commercials shows a family that redid their dad’s garage because he spends so much time touching up everyone else’s room. Another one shows a little girl who loves fashion though until this year has had to wear a uniform to school. They bought her new sets of fun, funky clothes to celebrate her transition to a new school in which she can wear her own outfits. Both sets of gifts celebrate the core of the person they are given to.

We spend a lot of time gifting, though how much time do we really spend paying tribute to people who make such a difference in our lives? If we focused on this later part more often, we may find our gift lists transformed from simple packages to truly extraordinary gifts, and incidentally may find that the holiday season is filled with a lot more joy and a lot less stress.

career, dreams, job, retail

The first 100 days of an MBA grad

Christa Avampato

I was recently asked to write an article for my alumni newspaper. The article had to be cut down quite a bit due to space constraints. Here is the article in its entirety.

“First off, a big hello from the other side to my second year friends and to those first years whom I had the pleasure to meet during Darden Days and various other “please come join our community” events where we tried our best to woo you into accepting at Darden. I’m glad you’re there, and in many ways I am very sorry I am not there with you. Darden is one of the most incredible places I have ever had the privilege to call home.

Can it really be 100 days since I graduated? How did the days get by me so quickly? I have done my best blocking and tackling job, and still time is slipping by at a dizzying pace. Such is the life of a retailer (me).

I graduated without a job – so if you are still in the hunt, don’t despair. I moved to NYC with no job, no money, and a desire to be in an industry that has zero interest in MBAs, or so I was told. And now I live in my favorite area of Manhattan on Riverside Park, work for the best boss I’ve ever had (he’s so brilliant, insightful, and unfailingly supportive and kind that I’m considering asking him, and his equally wonderful wife, to adopt me), and got a dream job at a toy company. I’m not kidding – sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.

If you want the details of my job hunt, I’m glad to share them. (The story is a bit too long for the purposes of this article so if you want the full details or you need someone’s success story to keep you motivated, please email me. Seriously – I check my email obsessively.) You can also ask Kellogg Leliveld – without her, I wouldn’t have gotten to my current company. In short, I can tell you I squeezed every last drop of learning out of Darden that I could get, I researched and contacted companies like a mad woman, I kept smiling, even when I felt like crying (which was often), I refused to take a job that wasn’t perfect for me, and I had an absolutely miserable summer between my first and second years – the worst summer on record. And now I am so grateful for that miserable summer because it forced me to stop compromising in every area of my life, personal and professional. In these first 100 days, I have learned that comprising your happiness for what you think you should do and what others think you should do is a road that can only lead to a very unhappy life and a job that ultimately you will hate.

Joël graciously provided me with some talking points, which I am very appreciative of, so I am going to answer those now:

Fear:
I had a lot of fears when going through Darden, when graduating, and when taking a job. I was really afraid that I wasn’t up to the challenge. Darden asked more from me than I ever asked from myself, and as a harsh self-critic, that is saying a lot. And what I learned through my interview process with my now boss is that we have to commit. It is incredible what developing a strong, true, deep sense of commitment will do – it will eradicate fear. I am someone completely obsessed with worry and fear. I know what you’re going through. And what I was missing all along was commitment to asking for and getting exactly what I wanted. Don’t do that. Take out a piece of paper, right now, and write out your perfect job, your perfect boss, your perfect whatever-you-want, and refuse to take anything less. Make a sealed promise to yourself to get exactly what is on that paper.

Fun at work:
I work for a retailer as the Senior Analyst Manager of Trend and Innovation, which is to say I am a nerdy version of Tom Hanks in Big. I have fun about 10 hours a day (and my boss is horrified by how much I work! Can you believe that?) We are charged with infusing the company with creativity, and then daily making the business case for innovation and re-invention. We are actively helping to turn the ship around. I run to work every morning, and have made shopping a scientific experiment and a sport (which is the only way I can stand to be in a store longer than 5 minutes. Secretly, I hate shopping, which I’m learning makes me a good retailer.)

Why Darden mattered:
I got a do-over by going to Darden. I was a job switcher in every sense of the word. I was so non-traditional that some people wondered what in the world I was doing at Darden and what in the world I would ever do after. That’s okay. And when I turned down a very lucrative job in a top-rate training program with one of the largest companies in the world, some people told me I was crazy. Absolutely nuts. And that’s okay, too. I knew me better than they did. There’s a great video on You Tube that gets me through criticism like this; it’s the 60-second ad that Apple ran in their “Think Different” campaign. It’s their salute to the Crazy Ones – have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvn_Ied9t4M. This little clip keeps me going. Crazy ones are the ones who make a difference. “The right answer” is not always essential, and many times is counter-productive. Darden showed me that humility, creativity, and diligence will get you everywhere.

And finally a word about toy recalls:
My boss was recently put in charge of managing and communicating safety initiatives across the enterprise. Right now, he is up in Toronto walking our Canadian stores with the CEO and President, and preparing to address the Board tomorrow morning on the issue of toy safety. Because we are privately held, the Board is made up entirely of private equity investors. When they did their investment analysis, I can guarantee that they did not account for tens of millions of toys being recalled by the world’s largest toy manufacturer right before the Christmas shopping season. My boss and I have agonized over the presentation deck for weeks, and now it’s show time.

We will be a better company for going through this, even as every analyst on Wall Street speculates about what this will do to the holiday shopping season. We will have better relationships throughout our supply chain as a result. We will hold ourselves to higher standards of responsibility and accountability. I have had a front-row seat to the end of an era in this industry – the days of cheap product without consequences are over. Manufacturers can no longer squeeze overseas production facilities – there is nothing left for them to give. We thought we were in the toy business; we’re not. Fundamentally, we are in the trust business, and it will take some work to regain that trust and to use it to define who we are and what we mean to our guests. It’s about re-invention and re-purposing, and it is the most critical work a company can ever do. And we’re doing it.

Not bad for the first 100 days. We do 80% of our revenue between October 1st and December 31st so I am sure the next 100 will be just as eventful! Stay tuned – this is going to be exciting.