Fritinancy

Brands of the Year: Fritinancy Edition

The headlines this year were full of failing or dead brands, from Circuit City and Max Factor to Pontiac and Saturn. (For more about eight major brand failures, see CNN Money's wrap-up.) And let's have several mournful moments of silence for the defunct newspapers and magazines—the Rocky Mountain News, Gourmet, I.D., and many others.

But my own Brands of the Year list isn't a eulogy; it's a salute to brands that survived (sometimes despite serious damage) and made us look, talk, and think.

For a longer view, see my Brands of the Decade: 2000-2009 post.

In alphabetical order:

Words of the Year: Fritinancy Edition

Technology, politics, and the economy dominate my list this year. Oh, and the undead.

As with my Words of the Decade list, I followed the American Dialect Society's criteria for selection, in this case:

• new or newly popular in 2009
• widely or prominently used in 2009
• indicative or reflective of the popular discourse.

No brand names on this list: Brands of the Decade and Brands of the Year are coming soon. UPDATE: Read my Brands of the Decade post.

In alphabetical order:

Word of the Week: Flash Sale

Flash sale: A limited-time online sales event open only to registered members of a website.

The real-world versions of flash sales—sample sales and invitation-only private sales—aren't new, but the concept came to the Web relatively recently and has been gathering momentum. In February 2008 Forbes magazine wrote about the U.S. pioneer of flash sales, Gilt Groupe, founded in 2007, which borrowed its business model (and possible the spelling of "Groupe") from a French site, vente-privee.com, that had launched in 2001. 

Gilt had the territory to itself for a while, but now it's been joined by other "exclusive" sites (a misnomer, because invitations are easy to score) such as RueLaLa (bought in October by e-commerce company GSI Commerce), Totsy, Ideeli, and HauteLook. These sites sell clothing and accessories; others offer home furnishings and even travel packages. All of the sites take advantage of surplus inventory and the retail recession and build demand by limiting "membership" and keeping sales brief—usually two or three days. And they represent a rare bright spot in the retail picture.

From a Dec. 6 article in the New York Times, "Secret's Out: Sample Sales Move Online":

The business model is simple: the sites buy mostly overstocked clothing and accessories from brand-name designers, then discount them deeply. Adrenaline-pumped shoppers rush to get the deals because the items are often gone in a few hours.

The sites try to recreate the rush of a warehouse sample sale, minus the trampling and shoving, but they borrow as much from the Home Shopping Network as they do from Saks Fifth Avenue. After shoppers add an item to their cart at Gilt, for example, they get a 10-minute countdown before they lose the item.

Meanwhile, according to Business Week:

Vente-Privee.com has expanded to Germany, Spain, Italy, and the U.K., and has now worked with more than 600 brands in luxury apparel, wine, home decor, and other areas. In 2007, Boston-based venture capital firm Summit Partners acquired a 20% stake that valued Vente-Privee.com at about $1 billion. Dozens of copycat sites have sprung up in France, fueling a substantial e-commerce industry there.

Compare flash mob and flash memory.

Opportunism Knocks

This ad for Saks Fifth Avenue appeared on page A3 of Monday's New York Times:

I skimmed along until opportunistic brought me up short. Opportunistic? Really?

It's clearly the wrong word. But why? And what should it have been?

Cultural Anthropologie

Romantically staged and evocatively photographed, every Anthropologie catalog is a visual feast. The merchandise—women's clothing and accessories along with furniture and home decor—shimmers in soft light; the models look pensive and intelligent (they often perch in libraries) in their winsomely mismatched, determinedly non-mass-market outfits.

Above:  Paeonia scoopneck

And the best part, at least for this reader? Each item in the catalog (and website) has a name. And not just a boring descriptor, either. Anthropologie product names are literary, evocative, and sometimes surprisingly erudite.

What's the Skinny on J.C. Penney's a.n.a. Brand?

For a 107-year-old company beset by falling revenue, retail chain J.C. Penney is pursuing an admirably aggressive and forward-thinking strategy. It has more than 1,000 stores, its website is the largest in the United States, and in July it opened its first-ever Manhattan store, to cheers and sneers. Its Sephora stores-within-stores, introduced in 2006, bring a sophisticated range of cosmetics to mid-market shoppers.

But I have to wonder where the strategy was when Penney's named one of its private-label brands a.n.a.

According to the website and the ads, a.n.a. stands for "a new approach." But "ana" has another meaning known to many girls and women (including, I'd venture to say, a lot of women in fashion and retail): It's slang for the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. On the sickest end of the anorexia spectrum is the self-described pro-ana movement, often personified as a girl/woman named Ana. (The counterpart among bulimics is "pro-mia," personified as Mia.)

The coincidence, if that's what it is, was picked up by Consumerist, which quoted a reader: "This seems to be an interesting choice name for a new clothing campaign, especially since the term is still widely unknown except for those directly involved with anorexia & other eating disorders."

Then there's the commenter who wrote:

The 12-year-old who lives inside my brain understands and chortles at the accidental anorexia connection, but is tantalized more by the opportunity to scrawl a letter "L" in Sharpie beside all of the incidences of "a.n.a." that will appear on the store signage. I'm not proud.

With increasing attention on the role of too-thin fashion models in promoting eating disorders, Penney's brand-name choice seems misguided. And, given Penney's wholesome, Main Street image in the marketplace, it's more than a little perverse.

Shacking Up

Engadget reports that RadioShack is about to launch a "pretty noticeable rebranding" that includes changing the name of the retail operation to The Shack. According to a RadioShack website, the change will kick off with "The Shack Summer Netogether," which will "connect San Francisco and New York  via larger-than-life laptops August 6th - 8th."

Engadget comments on the name change:

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense -- radios aren't exactly considered cutting edge these days, and from the sounds of things, the store is about to launch a full assault on the mobile space, bringing T-Mobile into the fold this month, and attempting to cover the gamut on cellphone reselling. Still, we're not sure "The Shack" is the right direction... unless they wanted us to immediately picture a remote location where very, very bad things happen.

RadioShack opened its first store (in Boston) in 1921; according to the corporate history, the name was borrowed from the term used for the small wooden structure that housed a ship's radio equipment.

RadioShack's name-ectomy follows a similar move by Pizza Hut, which in June announced its new sub-brand The Hut.

The Shack, The Hut ... shorter names for a downsized economy? Let's speculate on what the next tinyfication will be:

• Pottery Barn shrinks to The Barn.
• IHOP, formerly the International House of Pancakes, cuts back to The House.
• Coldwater Creek slims down to The Creek.
• Hidden Valley Ranch reduces to The Ranch.
• Holiday Inn downsizes to The Inn. (Who can afford a holiday these days?)
• Log Cabin ("authentic maple-tasting syrup"—don't think too hard about that) dwindles to The Cabin.

UPDATE: From Rob Frankel on Twitter: "Next Jack in the Box will be The Box. Oy."

UPDATE #2: And how could I have forgotten Banana Republic, due for an alteration to The Republic?

UPDATE #3: More on the "Shack" campaign, including photos from the Netogether, at the Brand New Blog. The campaign was created by Bay Area agency Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners, which is perhaps best known for its work with MINI.

More suggestions? Leave a comment.

(Hat tip: The Name Inspector on Twitter. Image: Terminal screen at a Radio Shack retail store, via Engadget.)

Oh Dad, Poor Dad

You're walking through Oakland's "Uptown" (formerly Downtown), where retail is scarce and often sad. (Example: the "Wig's" store.) As you round a corner near the 19th Street BART station, the sight of this window brings you to a confused halt.

What. The. Hell?

Questions tumble through your head. Did you miss the grand opening of some too-cool-for-school boutique from Manhattan's Meatpacking District? Is the display a contender in a new "Pimp My Store Window" reality show? Did the gang from Fecal Face Gallery stage a stealth installation?

You check out the details: Rococo chair. Bare feet. Ill-fitting clothes. Randomly draped red fabric. No hands on the mannequin.

"I have no hands, and I must scratch."

And all that ... stuff spilling out of the toolbox.

There's a clue here.

Dress shirt, baseball cap, tie, work gloves, power cord, drill ... Wait a minute. What's that brand name? Craftsman? Yes indeed.

Which means we could be at only one store:

Yes, my friends. The Oakland Sears, Roebuck and Co.—purveyor of fine Craftsman tools and sturdy Kenmore appliances—has gone all ironic/conceptual/surreal for Father's Day. Or run out of money. Or lost the will to live.

Have a happy holiday, all you dads. Shop locally!

Names in the Wild: Farmers' Market

Searching for signs of spring on a cold, foggy Sunday, I went to the Temescal Farmers' Market here in North Oakland. I came home with perfectly ripe pluots, just-underripe apricots, shiitake mushrooms, an avocado, and field notes on hyperlocal naming practices.

Nicely Named: Roundup Edition

Irreference: I liked this publisher's former name, Quirk Books, but I like the new name even more. A blend of "irreverent" and "reference," it flows off the tongue and makes instant, intuitive sense. A good choice for the publisher of The Worst-Case Survival Scenario books, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the truly irreverent How to Tell If Your Boyfriend Is the Antichrist.

Ici: Looking for an icy treat on Berkeley's College Avenue? Alors, I see it ici. An elegant bilingual pun (ici is "here" in French), Ici is short and palindromic, evocative and playful.  So what if www.ici.com was registered? Ici-icecream.com works fine for a business whose website exists only for image and information. By the way, it's a beautiful website—and a delicious logo.

Coolerado: They're in Denver. They make air conditioners. Perfection. (Hat tip: Mary Sullivan.)

Chartreuse: I can't provide a link, because this small-town boutique doesn't have a website. I learned about it through a comment on a column I wrote for Visual Thesaurus about "green" brand names (content is restricted to subscribers). I admired the name; I loved the story behind it. Here's what Donita N. wrote:

Chartreuse is the name of a shop in Westerly, R.I., that sells fashions made from recycled materials. The owner wanted to name it after her favorite shade of green and only later realized that it also contains the words Art and Re-use. The store carries handbags made from aluminum can pull tabs, or from crocheted plastic bags or from strips of vinyl billboard material. She has placemats woven from magazine pages the way American children used to make paper chains from chewing gum wrappers. She herself makes hats and gloves by sewing together sections of old knitted wool sweaters.

I especially like the hidden words.

By the way, the yellow-green color known as chartreuse gets its name from Chartreuse liqueur, which was originally produced in the Grande Chartreuse Monastery in France's Chartreuse Mountains.