Conventional wisdom and lots of news pieces like this one hold that second hand store sales pick up in a recession. One used-gear retailer’s numbers, though, seem to push the other way.
Sports One Source reported last week that Play it Again Sports, the 364-door used sporting goods retailer saw 2008 sales slide 6%. It’s hard to tell whether this is a reflection on Play it Again Sports or on consumer shopping habits. Research data on used sporting goods sales is hard to come by.
It may be that Play It Again’s ship is yet to come in. After all, retail sporting goods sales didn’t turn lousy until late last year. The U.S. Census Bureau Monthly Retail Trade Survey showed sporting goods retail sales up every month in 2008 until sales slid sharply in October. And, despite a lousy November, sales ticked back up over 2007 levels in December.
The National Retail Federation has data out showing a dip in sporting goods sales in January of this year and then a modest rise in February. It may be, that despite reduced consumer spending overall, sporting goods consumers have yet to reign in spending enough to really benefit the used-gear dealers.
Sometimes you have to invent the ruler before you can take measurements. When marketers decide how to explain the merits of a product, they look for words and concepts that they think will be meaningful to their target audience. Clorox “kills germs” and “whitens fabric.” Quaker oatmeal is “heart healthy.” For many products, these concepts are a no-brainer. Consumers have built-in benchmarks (cleanness, healthfulness, taste, calories, etc.) with which to evaluate products. For some products, however, marketers have to invent those benchmarks before they can boast about how their products measure up.
David Pogue, the NY Times technology columnist, has a great piece on this phenomenon as it applies to digital cameras. In “The Myth of Megapixels,” he chronicles the rise of the megapixel count as the red herring of digital camera specs. It turns out that comparing megapixels won’t help you find a better camera. Picture quality is dependent on lens, circuitry and sensor quality. A megapixel count tells you how many dots the image has, not how good those dots are. Still, camera marketers push pixels and consumers have long ago accepted this as the benchmark for digital camera evaluation.
The outdoor market is full of similarly questionable benchmarks. Some are imperfect but generally accepted, like temperature ratings for sleeping bags. Some are scientific but unhelpful, like the air permiability rating (CFM) some apparel makers use to describe a fabric’s windproofness. Read the rest of this entry »
