Urban Outfitters' Slap in the Face to Small Business
For an upcoming New York City store on Broadway, Urban Outfitters (URBN) has an unusual facade planned: The storefront will be divided up into four faux storefronts that will resemble a hat shop, a hardware store, a neighborhood bar, and a bodega. The brains behind this idea, creative director Ron Pompei of Pompei A.D., told the Wall Street Journal the idea is to create an "ironic statement" by making a unit of the national chain resemble a row of mom-and-pop stores.
But providing beleaguered small business owners with a snide reminder of exactly why life is hard now -- and why every American town now looks just like every other -- doesn't seem ironic, just rude. And not a good marketing strategy. Unless Urban Outfitters' plan is to make sure nobody over 40, who can remember the heyday of small merchants, comes in the store.
Retail-watchers are already howling. Over on the Consumerist blog, Meg Marco writes that creating facades that essentially parody the small stores UO and its kind have killed through voracious expansion is "a move sure to raise the blood pressure of those angry people who remember New York City before it had a Kmart and a bunch of Best Buys..."
Comments to her post include this from JulesNoctambule: "As if I didn't already have enough reasons never to shop there, they give me a new one to put at the top of the list."
Other posters say they find UO's storefront idea un-ironic because there are still plenty of bodegas out in Manhattan's boroughs. More to the point, why pretend to be a bodega when you're Urban Outfitters? How does that sell tank tops?
Clearly, UO wanted to get New Yorkers talking about its prominently located store. They've accomplished that. It remains to be seen if the unusual facade will make shoppers flock to UO, or avoid it.
Photo via Flickr user churchstreetmarketplace Related: