Episode Details

🎶"I love you, you love me, Barney's filing bank-rupt-cy!" PLUS: who is the vegan-curious Subway customer? Listen now!

Main Takeaways:

• Vice President of Global E-Commerce and Customer Experience at e.l.f Cosmetics, Ingrid Millman, is co-hosting with Brian and Phillip this week.
• Barneys New York has filed for bankruptcy but does this spell the end for the high-end department store model?
• The perception of luxury is shifting with younger generations and brands that don't change with the times will eventually phase out. 
• AriZona Iced Tea has partnered with a cannabis brand and the pairing could be a benchmark for the future of cannabis retail.

Barneys Is Bankrupt: Tough Times for High-End Department Stores: 

• Barneys New York has filed for bankruptcy (no Phillip, not the dinosaur)  and Ingrid captures up all of our inner feelings by saying that the Sex and the City characters within all of us are saddened by the news. 
• Brian has surprisingly never seen Sex and the City, so Ingrid makes him take a Buzzfeed quiz which yields surprising results. 
• There is a rapid expansion of markets that don't make sense for the Barneys brand that has succeeded at being a single store in New York. 
• Ingrid states that it is a tough time for high-end department stores and brings up how other big names in high-end department stores (like Henri Bendel) have been closing.

Discovery on Instagram: Are Department Stores Dead?:

• Brian rebuttals by saying there have been many luxury stores that have been very successful in taking their business online.
• "The department store was traditionally the place where discovery happened, but now discovery happens on Instagram."
• With the advent of social media and the tailoring of advertisements that accompanies it, Instagram knows more about you than a department store ever would. 
• Brian guesses that Barneys Warehouse could have been a contributing factor in Barneys' demise because a lot of what Barneys sold was sold at a discount at Barneys Warehouse. 

The Cannibalization of High-End Pricing: What is the Cost of Discounting?:

• Phillip points out that the concept of doubling down on your high-end inventory before you make the addition of discount products to your brand has never been talked about on the show before.
• A recent article mentioned that the Nordstrom family wants to increase its ownership of Nordstrom beyond 50% as a result of their plummeting sales. 
• There are a lot of luxury brands that cannibalize their full price sales by selling through discount outlets such as Nordstrom Rack.
• Phillip states that casualization in the workplace and a shift in the perception of luxury are contributing factors to the failing high-end department model. 

The Flash Sale Model: Disillusionment Through Discount:

• Ingrid attributes the financial recession around 2008 as the advent of flash sale type brands such as Giltand these discounted luxury goods removed some of the enchantment that was associated with luxury goods. 
• The older generations are typically buying the traditionally high-end brands and if those brands do not take notice of the buying habits of younger consumers, they w