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Teen Retail Keeps Missing The Point: The Buckle In The Spotlight

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Last week, The Buckle, a teen retailer offering "a unique mix of high-quality, on-trend apparel, accessories, and footwear," reported an 8.1% decrease in year-over-year same store sales for the 4-week period ending August 1st. This, in a year so far plagued by falling or flat sales, with the rare year-over-year monthly increase.

The Buckle is not alone. Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, Urban Outfitters, Hollister, and Zumiez have all been cited as retailers suddenly struggling to be relevant to teen shoppers. Pundits have offered explanations ranging from the high unemployment rate among teens, to fashion trends defined by brands that are too little, too late, to teens' technology obsessions taking over their discretionary income.

I'm not going to argue whether an assortment planned out by a middle-aged white-collar worker 9 months ago should or should not hold any chance of appealing to teens today. I'm not going to argue that teens have no money to spend on fashion – definitely not when some surveys report that teens' favorite brands include Michael Kors, MAC, and Apple Watch. And yes, mall traffic has been declining, but for retailers, that is just an excuse. In the digital age, that should not matter.

What matters is to be where your shoppers are, and teens are increasingly found online. According to Pew Research, more than half of teens aged 13-17 go online several times a day, and another 24% are online "almost constantly."

Remember the first three rules of retail? "Location, location, location"? While teens may seem to flock from one social media application to the next like hummingbirds in high winds, in truth there are only a few social media communities where teens legitimately welcome outreach and engagement with brands.

So, are teen retailers active in the communities where teens are looking for that engagement? The answer is no. Let's take The Buckle, a company which just reported a bruising July store comparables number and a flat Q2 on top of quarterly declines in same store sales, as just one example.

Like most teen retailers, Buckle is focused on back to school / back to college right now:

Theoretically, the company would have a lot of stories it could tell about back to school – stories the company could tell, stories its customers could tell, even stories told by the other brands it carries, like Hurley and Affliction, for example.

On the website itself, Buckle tells no real back to school stories. The only menu option that is at all lifestyle related is a section called "Style" which features different outfits and some lookbooks.

The video section of the site is solely promotional, about a new line the company is carrying called Gimmicks.

And, like with so many other retailers, the blog section, where Buckle should really be telling lifestyle stories, takes you away from the site to a WordPress blog, where the first article is about a new brand they are carrying, and the second is about how to wear plaid.

The third story has some possibilities. It's hard to see from the screenshot (there's something wrong with the way the blog displays when the Buckle logo is visible at the top), but the retailer is running a campaign called "Unstoppable." At first blush, it appears to be a call for teens to "be determined" and "have a positive attitude" and to share their successes with each other and with Buckle. But closer inspection reveals this is just another product promotion:

Buckle's Pinterest site is much the same. All of the "above the fold" boards are very product-oriented. Out of 40 boards, there are only three that appear to be anything other than relentless product promotion: Rehash Your Trash, #BuckledOut, and Buckle Team Style, and these are found way at the bottom of the list.

Buckle Team Style had the potential to be interesting, because it features some Buckle corporate interns (of course – who else should be running a company's Pinterest board?), who shared pictures of their personal style and interviews with Buckle product buyers.

The problem is, all of the pins on this board are from bucklestore.blogspot.com, which is defunct.

Buckle was difficult to find on Facebook. My first search ("The Buckle") didn't bring up the official Buckle company page at all. It was only when I searched again for "Buckle Store" that I found it. Here, the company features a link to its Instagram and Twitter accounts, as well as a lot of the same content found on the blog – both images and videos. However, it also had two interesting promotions – tag your style, one for women and one for men.

However, rather than telling an interesting story about each of the personas behind these images, Buckle links back to the Style section of the website (just the men's version this time, rather than the women's) – back to where we started!

Buckle's Twitter account is basically a reposting of everything they put on Instagram, which is somewhat ironic, given how much they use hashtags. I'm not saying that hashtags are a Twitter-only phenomenon, but by duplicating so much content from Instagram, it suggests the company is not paying nearly as much attention to Twitter as they might – especially when Twitter users are definitely paying attention to the hashtags.

YouTube is where Buckle actually does stand out. Their main YouTube page is still very product oriented – it features a promotion for making an appointment with a personal stylist, along with fall fashion looks. And in their full list of videos there's a lot of overlap between the content here and on the video section of their website.

But there is also fashion advice, how to wear the looks (which they really did film on a smartphone, a whole other story), and even holiday wishes from the Buckle team. Outside of the defunct Buckle Intern style board on Pinterest, this is the only place where the company shows a human face to the brand, rather than one focused almost exclusively on selling products.

Making A Genuine Connection

Here's the thing about teens and retail. They grew up in a world saturated by brand messages and product promotions. They're not immune – the advertising world as we know it would probably be dead already if that were true – but they certainly don't respond to traditional advertising and traditional ad messages the way their parents did when they were teens.

Several of the articles and research that I linked to at the beginning of this post emphasize that teens – Millennials and the younger teens that follow in their footsteps – are more interested in experiences than products. They're motivated by feeling connected and by feeling like they are sharing in something that is larger than just themselves.

The Buckle has a lot to work with. As a brand, it is the rock and roll rebel in the middle of a sea of overly-branded stuffy "popular kid" cliques. It is a bohemian brand at ground zero for one of the biggest trends for fall. But the face it presents to teens (who should theoretically be highly engaged with the brand) is purely promotional. Anything genuine is buried deep within the dark corners of its social media presence. It's actually really disappointing to see how much opportunity is missed here.

Social media is a tool for forging connections between people. Of course brands want to be there in order to sell products, but on social media, selling products is an outcome of genuine engagement, not the goal itself.

Retailers need to be on social media – they need to be where their customers are. And the teens on social media today become the adults on social media tomorrow. In this sense, teen retailers are the canary in the coal mine. Until they figure out how to be genuine, and how to make real, lifestyle-driven connections with their customers, the teen category will continue to disappoint. And it may not be long before retailers catering to older adults experience the exact same phenomenon.