The degree to which Americans have stopped shopping is getting almost as scary as our over-consumption used to be. Yesterday we learned that men worldwide had stopped buying underwear, a disturbing development because former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had famously fixed upon the metric as one of the most consistent, recession-proof sales figures in retail.
But it turns out demand for men’s underwear is more elastic than we thought (even if, heh, the elastic itself isn’t so much anymore.) Sales are projected to drop 2.3 this year. And elsewhere in the shopping universe, the February retail sales released yesterday portended a veritable bloodbath of red ink for the nation’s mall retailers. The worst pain was reserved for Nieman Marcus and Abercrombie & Fitch, whose affluent customers cut back their habits to the tune of 30 and 34%, respectively. And the four chains that managed to keep sales flat or modestly up from February 2008 were off-price or discount stores. With one exception…
It’s Hot Topic! The 681-store purveyor of spiked leather wrist cuffs, True Blue Raw hair dye, painful-looking body jewelry and assorted other signature accessories of misanthropic adolescent subcultures like “Goth.” So that’s what the nation’s teenage boys are buying with the money they save wearing holey underwear? Is the Depression turning good kids into antsocial derelicts in black lipstick who will never get jobs?
Well, yes on that last part. But Hot Topic has also apparently profited handsomely from its association with Twilight, a movie about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire only to attract the attention of a rival vampire who bites her wrist, prompting the boyfriend vampire to kill the rival vampire and save her life so they don’t have to miss the prom. Whatever the case, teenage angst needs no stimulus package.