When it’s time to accessorize, don’t forget your gadgets! For the gadget that has everything now come pouches, bags and sleeves to clothe your iPod, XBox or laptop. At the Magic Marketplace apparel trade show in Las Vegas this week, Tandy Brands Accessories, a major accessories supplier for retailers like Target, Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s and J.C. Penney, launched its NextGen line.  

The idea of protecting your gadgets in streamlined, modern-looking cases must make sense to some people, because Best Buy this fall will begin carrying a line of Liz Claiborne bags, cases and covers for electronics.  “Every year, we’ve been hearing at holiday that electronics were the big winners. We decided we needed to accessorize those electronics,” said Dan Weaver, vice president of design for Tandy’s men’s division.

Accessories as a category are generally insulated from fluctuations in consumer spending since people may forgo a full outfit but won’t feel guilty if they buy a bag, a belt or other small item.“Times are tough but our price points in categories are still accessible,” Weaver said. “I think overall the apparel industry will feel a pinch but I think we will be ok with accessories.”

Lone Star Funds, which has been seeking to abandon its purchase of Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co, is set to buy the struggling subprime mortgage lender for a reduced price of $8.50 a share. Accredited shares closed on the Nasdaq at $6.31 on Thursday.
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Vivendi dismissed recent speculation it was interested in buying German Pay TV broadcaster Premiere.
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Big U.S. and Canadian investors are set to push for the merger of TSX Group Inc and Montreal Exchange Inc. The exchanges have been in serious talks since this summer, the Globe and Mail reports.
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Nortel has joined the line of interested suitors in Tellabs Inc, according to a report in Web site Light Reading. Citing an unnamed Wall Street source, the telecom-industry focused Web site said Nortel is prepared to pay as much as $7.4-billion.
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With some deals looking shaky, the Deal Journal reports that peddlers of M&A rumors are starting to rear their heads again, noting that shares of Newmont Mining soared on rumors it would be bought by Barrick Gold for as much as $25 billion.
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China’s economic boom is driving up prices for bilingual bankers. Hedge funds and private equity firms, which are starting to source deals in China, are poaching bankers from Wall Street firms, making the hunt for already scarce talent even tougher.
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Thailand is pressuring Exxon and Chevron to make good on a pledge made 15 years ago to float shares in their local oil refineries in Bangkok next year. Many foreign investors are wary about Thailand after last year’s military coup.
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The storm in global credit markets has stalled Japanese leveraged buyouts and left banks exposed to unwanted risk, although deep-pocketed and conservative local banks are expected to act as a buffer. Deals disrupted by the credit squeeze include the syndication of buyout debt for MBK Partners’ acquisition of software firm Yayoi, Advantage Partners’ purchase of Tokyo Star Bank Ltd and Liberty Global Inc’s capital-raising, according to financial sources.
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Gottschalks Inc said it ended a strategic review that included a possible sale of the company, and decided to focus on a revised business plan to improve sales and operating performance as it posted a quarterly loss significantly wider than what analysts expected.

Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, American Eagle … seems like there are a lot of retailers out there that cater to teens and young adults. Right?

Well according to Women’s Wear Daily, another one is on its way.

Who.A.U. (stands for Who Are You?),  a South Korean retailer with what WWD calls “a passion for the California lifestyle,” will open its first U.S. store in Stamford, Connecticut, and plans to open 12 to 18 stores in the first year.

Daniel Pang, executive vice president of U.S. operations for Who.A.U., predicts the chain could eventually be as big as Hollister, WWD said. Hollister has 416 stores in the U.S.

Who.A.U. is bankrolled by $4 billion parent E-Land one of South Korea’s largest apparel makers.

Which is more worrisome to U.S. parents at the moment — a slew of Chinese-made products being recalled or the rising price of a gallon of milk? It’s the milk, according to Britt Beemer, chairman of America’s Research Group, which tracks consumer behavior and surveys shoppers on a weekly basis.
 
While he said that about 6 percent of parents surveyed in recent weeks have said they are concerned about the recalls and another 30 percent say they’re “slightly concerned”, 65 percent of parents say their supermarket prices have gone up dramatically. 
 
“They’re talking about the fact that they’re paying $2 more for a gallon of milk today than they did a year ago,” he said. “They just can’t believe the inflation they’ve seen at the supermaket.”
 
He said that while the product recalls are troubling (Read the latest recall), very often parents are not even aware if a toy they have in their home is affected by a recall. And with so many recalls being announced, he said, it is hard for parents to keep track of them all.
 
But Beemer said that when it comes to higher grocery prices, shopppers have no doubt that they are being affected.
 
“They tell us they feel like they’re spending at least $20 more a week for groceries this year than they were a year ago,” he said.
 
And then could be bad news headed into the holiday season.
 
“I don’t want to be that lone wolf crying in the wilderness, but I do think we could see a Christmas season this year where retail sales are flat,” he said.

What’s that flash of color beaming from racks usually drowning in oceans of dark blue denim? It’s the colored jean, of course.

With a color palette straight from a box of crayons, the colored jeans trend was on full display this week at Project Las Vegas, the luxury apparel trade show that runs concurrent with the larger Magic Marketplace show in Las Vegas.

Emeralds, royal blues and crimsons seemed to be the most popular shades, but a lavender showed up at Wrangler 47 along with an electric yellow-orange at Habitual. A smaller brand, which shall remain nameless, boasted what might probably be the most disconcerting choice out there - a jean colored like a baby aspirin.

Colored jeans hit the fashion world last spring, but now they’re being modified with different, more modern fits, not just in skinny styles. At Joe’s Jeans, the most popular is a light blue modified sailor pant that retails between $160 and $170, said Tara Meyer, a sales executive who deals with large department store accounts.

But jeans brands don’t plan on letting the rainbow hues take over, and many expect the trend to trickle in and out of fashion going forward.
    
“It won’t make you a billion dollars but it’s needed and it sells,” Meyer said. 
    
“They definitely will have color represented on their floors for spring,” said Meyer of her large retail accounts. The brand is in 1,200 doors in the United States.
    
Habitual, which sells to luxury clients like Barneys and Saks, also sees the colored trouser as the key jean look for spring. But the company, whose past lines included a neon green jean, is also offering a skinny royal blue shade with a zipper at the ankle. Very 80s.

It’s that time of year again when Las Vegas becomes, well, just a bit more fashionable. The largest apparel trade show in North America, the bi-annual Magic Marketplace, is back in the city of sin and convention centers and hotels are flooded with a motley group of chic boutique owners, garmentos, stick-thin models in stiletto heels, tattooed streetwear reps, international suppliers chatting on cellphones in Chinese and Vietnamese and men and women in suits (the latter comprised of bankers, analysts, fund managers and an occasional CEO).
 
In the flurry of orders taken for Spring 2008, the same questions popped up over and over: How long will last the success of the dress - 2006 and 2007’s key item for women? Will skinny jeans get the boot by high-waisted, wide-leg pants? Does the slump in the mature women’s apparel market have a fix? And what’s the next big thing? There are no easy answers out there nor here in this blog, but the queries point to the ever-changing nature of fashion, a sophisticated consumer barraged by choices and the billions of dollars hanging in the balance. Stay tuned.

Calling all fashion houses, designers, sytlists, fashion-savvy musicians and the cool kids who love them — MySpace has something for you!

The social networking site launched on Tuesday the official version of its Fashion Community, where users can get beauty tips and fashion ideas, watch streaming video of fashion shows and photo shoots, and hunt for design inspiration.

“Fashion is such a huge part of our users’ lives. This gives them a way to connect with other users and express themselves,” said Todd  Dufour, director of strategic marketing for MySpace, in an interview.

Dufour said the site will also include exclusive explanations of different celebrities’ styles and editorials about the style of certain stand-out users, but will also encourage users to post their own content.

“MySpace Fashion is all about amateur and professional work,” Dufour said. “We want users to feel empowered that if they’re standing outside the tents at Bryant Park and they were to upload a video of, say, Issac Mizrahi walking in, and if it’s a good video and they get their point across, we want to feature it.”

MySpace – which has 115 million unique visitors a month — may become the largest interactive site for fashionistas, but it is certainly not alone. There is ”Iqons“and “WhoWhatWearDaily,” which is partnering up with MySpace for this fashion adventure.

In the year since the site launched the test version of the MySpace Fashion Community it has lured some 53,000 “friends.” It hopes to make many more with its official launch, in celebration of New York’s Fashion Week, which begins next week.

Ummm! Smells like chicken!

Kentucky Fried Chicken is promoting its new $2.99 deal by putting fried chicken on corporate mail carts in hopes that the smell will make people want to buy its chicken.

In what it calls its “first-ever, scent-focused” pilot program, KFC put the chicken on mail carts at the Salvation Army office in Chicago, Chemistry.com in Dallas; and the Trade Association & Society Consultants of Washington, D.C.

KFC spokesman Rick Maynard said the idea was similar to what happens at headquarters.

“When someone from food innovation brings a tray of fried chicken up, everyone stands up and looks over their cubes,” Maynard said.
 
The aroma assault apparently was just a way of getting some media attention for the new meal, though. KFC, a unit of Yum Brands, actually gave the workers in those offices free meals.

“It would be kind of mean to let them smell the aroma and then not feed them,” Maynard said.

Want your customers to have a cheery shopping experience this holiday season? It will involve a lot more than stocking your stores with hordes of employees.

According to Linda Shea, global managing director of customer strategies at Opinion Research Corp, retailers need to look at their entire customer experience when figuring out the best way to provide proper customer service to their shoppers.

That could mean adding more signage in the stores to make them easier to navigate; making sure check-out lanes are running smoothly to get customers in and out quickly; adding a greeter at the door to immediately answer questions; or providing more self check-out aisles.

“Who is your target market?” is what companies need to be asking themselves when they are building a customer service strategy, she said in an interview.

For instance, a store that has a large number of senior citizen shoppers might not want to install a row of self-check out stations because chances are, they will not get used by that shopper, she said.

“It’s all a function of your demographic profile,” she said.

While companies may hesitate to invest in customer service and the overall customer experience because they cannot see an immediate financial benefit, she said they should realize that a customer who has had a bad experience can cost them money down the road — especially because there is a tendency among shoppers to broadcast a bad experience.

“You can be assured a lot of people are going to hear about it,” she said. “It’s long-term damage.”

The weak housing market should be more important to the price of home improvement retailers like Home Depot  and Lowe’s than any potential federal reserve rate cut.

At least that’s what historical data show, Credit Suisse retail analyst Gary Balter said in a research note.

“While interest rates matter, existing home sales, expenditures on home improvement and consumer spending combined matter more,” Balter said.

In the early 1990s, when the Fed cut rates in the wake of the savings and loan crisis, housing sales still continued to worsen. Home Depot and Lowe’s performed in line with the market for more than a year, while other hardline retailers outperformed those stocks following the rate cuts.

In 1995, existing home sales, spending and employment all slowed despite rate cuts and Lowe’s traded sideways until 1998, when existing home sales rebounded, Balter said.

Those periods were different than in 2001, when Lowe’s stock performed well during a period of rate cuts. But the housing market was also booming at that point.

“In today’s environment, we would expect Home Depot and Lowe’s to react more in line with the 1990 and 1995 cuts, rather than 2001,” Balter said, adding that other hardline retailer stocks should do much better than Home Depot and Lowe’s as the Fed cuts rates.