One would have thought that the relentless fashion cycle would have gone the way of other old fashioned retail practices, but it seems not.
Quite a long number of years ago I found myself in need of a new swimsuit in January; I was bemoaning the fact that the only ones available were in the expensive Cruisewear sections of the upmarket department stores, when a colleague suggested that I try asking in Marks & Spencer: ‘They’ll probably have some from last summer in the stock room which they are waiting to bring out again.’ And so it proved.
In these days of just in time stockrooms stay on on the move. Instead of occupying chunks of high-priced space on high street or in shopping centre they cruise the high seas or the motorways, the goods coming to rest for the shortest possible time in vast hangar like distribution centres on less expensive real estate. And if they are not sold quickly enough then they are on the move again – turned into rags to go round the circle again or dispatched to the vast Third World or Eastern European jumble sale.
Let us hope that the effect of economic hard times will not be to reduce the velocity of circulation of goods without bringing back the stockroom, or the effect will be that if you choose the wrong day or time to go shopping – well tough, you’ll just have to go without.
Related post
Call of the running tide
Call of the running tide
