With intent to cover all areas of the industry and culture, our panelists ranged in variety and career diversity. Elizabeth McGarry, Co-Founder and Creative Director of McGarry&Sons, a sportswear consulting agency and studio, has history working with some of sportswear’s biggest names, from Nike to Puma. Elizabeth Natola, on the other hand, a Senior Footwear Designer at Converse had a different start, working at BBC International as the Vice President of Design, working with some of the world’s major brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Guess, and DKNY. Next, we had Maya “Sprat” Spratling, who is a bi-coastal stylist and Creative Director of Tomboyish Magazine, an online platform for androgynous women in fashion, while also creating her own personal content through her specialty in color theory and modeling. Lastly, but certainly not least, was Donica White, Global Brand Communication Marketing Manager at Reebok GHQ, originally getting her start in the industry through Karmaloop.com, and even dabbling in architecture and construction for a period.
Source: HER by Bodega
Bodega put together an incredible event recently. The description above explains who was on the panel at the in-store event. This video is inspirational and because I tend to push the intentions of every post into a rant on problems, the event at Bodega gives me a chance to speak on why small shops are going to win over every problem in retail.
I typically write a description of an event and then launch into a diatribe about marketing and all of that… but with recent posts I’ve written about retail and the influx of messages I’ve gotten about my discussion on workplace treatment, I realize more and more how important small, well run sneaker shops are in creating a better environment for people at the lowest levels working in retail.
Hibbett Sports Has More To Fix With City Gear Than They Think
In the above article I discussed City Gear and the way they are treating their employees. The problem is this isn’t exclusive to City Gear, it’s an issue in all of retail. As entrepreneurship grows, the abundance of jobs available in various sectors grows. Young adults and some older adults are unwilling to work in positions that feel thankless, so what happens is jobs like managers positions and sales leads positions at stores like City Gear and even Foot Locker are understaffed leading to managers working from 9 to 9. These managers can’t quit because they may have 401k’s and they are often disheartened and frustrated trying to hold together skeleton crews of sales leads and assistant managers.
Bodega holds, in this event and at its core, the winning solution to sneaker retail. I’ve said often on this site that a more personalized experience at retail is required. What I haven’t said is that sneaker retail that is top heavy with C-Suite Execs behave like trickle down economic theories. The people at the bottom tend to do the heavy lifting and the people at the top instead of supporting thier employees, beat them down which leads to extremely high turnover rates.
I want you to take a moment and look at the faces inside of Bodega at this HER event:
Yeah I get that it’s an event… but guess what? You can’t have an event like this at a coporate run company because most of the time a corporate run company is going to go for the cheesy homerun event with a rapper of some type requiring crazy amounts of security and ultimately the events fail to foster community. Honestly, the logistics for an event like this would never be placed into the hands of the store manager, because they already have an extremely full plate. Sneaker retail is a failed experiement because there isn’t any soul and by default the workers are basically playing the role of Marshawn Lynch, “They are at work so they won’t be fined.” Bodega is consistently creating dope sneaker and fashion moments and I’m willing to bet:
- managers can have days off
- employees like working there
- the store can close for real lunch breaks without pressure from the mall or pressure from the DM or RVPs.
- there isn’t a feeling of pervasive hopelessness.
Number 4 hurt me to write. As stores like Finish Line and Hibbett Sports join forces to become bigger chains and Foot Locker collabs with Nike to release limited shoes, Bodega creates an experience and if you work there you are given the chance to make magic happen. Managers at Foot Locker know they can’t go beyond being a manager. I spoke with a manager at a Foot Locker owned store who met with his RVP who was doing a visit. The RVP basically told him he didn’t have a real shot at getting into corporate at Foot Locker. This is a person who went back to school while turning around a poorly performing location.That manager is now planning an exit from the company.
At Bodega once a month you may have a pop-up fashion show, or an in store seminar like Her by Bodega. Big sneaker retail needs to take a break from being big and take a field trip to Bodega. Note the sign on the door at the start of the video up there? It says closed at 5pm for an event. Bodega holds the keys to better retail and I’m thinking that big retail needs to find a way to fix a very broken machine.