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Department stores have been trying for years to turn their private label offerings into real brands.

Most attempts have failed because they are just names with no deeper meanings making it impossible for them to compete with the genuine article.

JC Penny clearly understood the weakness in this approach and went outside to the brand master, Ralph Lauren to create its latest offering, American Living.

What's interesting about this concept, is although it has touches of Lauren's style all over it, he's created another world for the department store. Lauren's past success has been driven by the clever balancing act between present and past, His ideas were classical, but they were always believable in a contemporary context.

American Living is different, it's unabashed in highlighting the past as its inspiration. The web site suggests that the concept is anchored around the General Store and is rooted in a time when American's were practical, had a sense of humor and dreamed of a better life. This is no daily commute from the suburbs.

It's fascinating to see such a shift to the past in a country that's usually so wrapped up in the future.

Something has changed and perhaps the future no longer looks so bright.

In such a world, we are going to cling to the icons of the past for re-assurance and confirmation of who we are and where we stand.

American Living is just one example of the nostalgia for the past that America is now craving in everything from its cars to its politicians.

It's a force that cannot be ignored.


Posted by Ed Cotton Fortune has a good story about VF's Nautica brand, which seems to be having some trouble competing with department store brands and the category leader Polo.

VF has long adopted a strategy of acquiring brands with limited distribution and leveraging its muscle at a department store level, to grow them. It now looks like this strategy is coming undone. Department stores are in love with the margins that private label can achieve and some have even gone out to seek the services of Ralph Lauren to help them develop their own-label brands.

This makes life tough for VF, it can no longer rely on department store distribution as a given and has to invest in building these acquired brands through broad scale communication and brand experiences.

Fortune, even notes one of Nautica's major weaknesses is that it has no stand-alone stores and I noticed it doesn't yet have e-commerce on its website, although this is coming in 08.


Posted by Ed Cotton selling real estate like high fashion (40.66605624777337 , -111.48101806640625) Real estate is the most expensive thing we will ever purchase, but most advertising never reflects this. Talisker, a private home ownership club located in the wilderness of Deer Valley, Utah, is taking a different route.

The club teamed up with two of the world’s leading fashion photographers, Patrick Demachelier and Peter Lindbergh and even included Lauren Hutton on their shoot.

These photographers make Talisker look like “Real estate by Ralph Lauren”, which is not surprising,Talisker’s creative director, Nancy Vignola, was formely a creative head at Polo Ralph Lauren.


Posted by Ed Cotton