Diane Craig has shopped.
Now, she has dropped.
For years, the 45-year-old Glenview mom loved buying cute clothes for her kids and stuff that made her house more functional and fun.
“I like funky little things that you just look at and think, ‘That’s cool.’ I liked buying my Calphalon pans. That great soap and hand cream from Williams-Sonoma. I even got excited about getting wrapping paper for Christmas,” she said.
No more.
Shopping is just too tedious, especially when she’s looking for clothes for herself.
“I’d rather just get something than look for something,” she said. “When it comes to buying for me, I just want out of there.”
In mid-October, Craig had to buy a new skirt for some important upcoming business meetings. Her teen daughter wanted to stroll the mall. But Craig made a surgical strike at the Garfield & Marx selection at Nordstrom, found the skirt, bought it, and left. Total elapsed time: about 15 minutes.
Retail therapy is no longer a cure for the everyday woes of women in midlife. If anything, shopping aggravates the time, energy and money crunch that is the daily lot of women in their late 30s to late 50s.
It’s all about time and money, says Carrie McCament, marketing director for marketing consultancy Frank About Women, based in Winston-Salem, N.C. Its July survey of 753 female shoppers found that among midlife women, enthusiasm about shopping for its own sake has dropped 18 percent. The study found that 48 percent of women in their 30s found shopping “stimulating,” but only 28 percent of women ages 40 to 55 felt that way.
Christmas shopping adds a whole new dimension to the equation.
The National Retail Federation reported last week that 71.8 percent of consumers shopped the day after Thanksgiving, fueling the trade group’s expectation that this year’s holiday sales will top last year’s by a healthy 5.7 percent.
That’s not to say that everyone who is shopping is feeling jolly about it. Nearly a third of shoppers find the very thought of Christmas shopping stressful, according to a survey by British online retailer MemoriseThis.com.
It’s not hard to understand why once-a-year shoppers would quake at the prospect of the merry fray. But many inveterate shoppers–women who used to consider a visit to Bloomingdale’s more therapeutic than a session with a shrink–have lost their stomach for it no matter what the season.
For women in midlife who are short on time and money, it’s just not fun anymore.
“That’s when you’re busiest, with careers and kids in activities. Getting out into the fray is not as pleasurable as it used to be,” McCament said.
Women of all ages have changed their shopping habits in the last two years. The Frank study found that 60 percent of women reported they are more relentless than ever at hunting down bargains to stretch household budgets squeezed by paltry raises and the rising cost of health care and other necessities.
A social outlet for some
And overall, women still like to shop: 42 percent of the survey respondents said that they sometimes shop to feel better, and when they do, they splurge on something special. When the urge to splurge hits, it hits hard: 68 percent reported that they like to treat themselves to something special and they throw economy to the wind when they do. The occasional blowout on clothes, crafts and home decorations seems to be the one exception to the bargain-driven mind-set prevailing today, according to the Frank study.
But those who happily head to the mall are most likely to be young women or those older fiftysomethings, McCament said.
“What older and younger women have in common is that [shopping] is social, and they only shop for themselves,” she said. “Their discretionary income is all theirs. And older women have so many people to buy for … grandkids, weddings, anniversaries.”
Other retail consultants also have noticed the shopworn attitude of midlife women.
“That bumper sticker that says, `When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping,’ isn’t true anymore. Women would rather take a nap than go to a store,” said Mary Lou Quinlan, president of Just Ask a Woman, a New York market research firm that specializes in women’s consumer attitudes.
Endless chore shopping sucks the joy from the entire process, she said.
“Retail therapy is the idea of relief–fun, having a good time, treating yourself,” Quinlan said. “It isn’t a rare treat if you have to go … again.”
“The older we get, the more we have seen it all,” sighed Toni Reece, a corporate trainer based in Reading, Pa. She is constantly shopping for her sons, ages 20 and 15, her husband, their household, and her business: detergent, gym socks, copier paper, groceries. How fun is that?
Not much. But clothes shopping is the worst, she said.
“It isn’t fun because you don’t have the time to try clothes on. You don’t have time to find the best bargains. When you are clothes shopping, you set yourself up for rejection.”
She has tried to turn her hatred of clothes shopping into a style signature.
“I stick with black and white and a splash of color,” she said. “I wear the long red jacket over black pants and a white, crisp shirt.”
Anne Obarski views the shopping slump from a personal and professional point of view. A fortysomething retail consultant who runs a household that includes two teenagers, she said that retailers are partly to blame. Overcrowded stores “offer something for everyone and end up delivering nothing for anybody” she said. Constant and complicated sale and discount programs often confuse and frustrate shoppers rather than build their loyalty.
Making it easy for women
Annoyance with department stores is exactly why boutique chains, specialty catalogs and shop-at-home “trunk shows” are reeling in dollars from midlife women, Obarski has observed.
Specialty shops like Eileen Fisher, Chico’s and Talbot’s offer a ruthlessly edited selection of clothes that is consistent from season to season in style, fit and color. That makes it easy for customers to find something new that goes with what they already own.
Clothes retailers that sell through home-based trunk shows also are winning the weary.
New York-based Tanner Cos. operates two divisions, Doncaster and Elana, that send collections of sample garments to home-based representatives who then set up temporary boutiques in their homes. All the clothes are Tanner’s own designs and brands.
The core customer is a midlife woman who craves personal shopping experiences that she doesn’t get at department or specialty stores, said Colby Kerr, Illinois district sales leader for Doncaster and Elana. Elana, Tanner’s line for plus-size women, was introduced in 2000 and has 14 home-based agencies in Illinois and 300 nationally.
Kerr, 51, with two teen daughters at home and one in college, said she got into the business partly because she suffers from shopping burnout herself. Moms who work and volunteer are “worn out from shopping for everyone else,” says the Kenilworth resident. “We’d rather spend time with a book or with friends than shopping.”
