America's maturing innovation: off‐price apparel stores

Successful retailing concepts never remain static. When they become popular, competition increases and this inevitably leads to the need for differentiation and a repositioning of marketing appeal. In America off‐price apparel retailing originated in the early 1970s, selling high quality brand name clothes from relatively spartan stores where the overheads were minimal. It was designed to serve a marketing void that fell between high priced department and speciality store goods and discount operations. Their success and growth has inevitably meant a move up market, however. In the second of an irregular series of articles on American retailing Dr David Rogers describes this experience and muses on whether an equivalent operation could work in the UK.