What Urban Outfitters Reveals About Their Customers
In the same way you can learn about what someone values by what they buy, you can learn about a group by looking at what a store sells them.
URBN
Urban Outfitters has 130 stores in the US, Canada, and Europe. On January 31st, Urban Outfitters Inc. reported $1.94 Billion in annual revenue (nearly doubled in the last 4 years). Their website claims that their “established ability to understand our customers and connect with them on an emotional level is the reason for our success.” They also claim to offer a “lifestyle-specific shopping experience for the educated, urban-minded individual in the 18 to 30 year-old range”.
Whenever Kim and I are down in the University District I like to stop by Urban Outfitters and look at their displays. The most basic thing I noticed a few months ago were that their non-clothing items can be broken into a few categories: books, photography, music, toys, household, and drinking.
Toys, Bowel Movements, & Me
Yesterday, after a trip to the dentist we did a quick run-through and here’s the glimpse of what connecting with the educated, urban-minded individual on an emotional level looks like.
Pee, Poo, & Bongs
Which is probably why I’m curious about what my poo is telling me.
A theologian and media-ecologist I read recently made the point that in a society immersed in the trivial and inconsequential, the only responses most of our culture are left with are irony and cynicism. When nothing matters, when everything feels fleeting and insignificant, how can people not be sarcastic and disenchanted? Similarly, in a recent article, the Atlantic described Omega Males like this: “He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man.”
Maybe that’s where this section comes in…
Labeled pint glasses and flasks.
The glasses aren’t just labeled, they’re labeled with titles like slut, pimp, ho, bitch, and hot mess, and slogans like “My Life Sucks”. Someone could say that they’re supposed to be ironic but that’s my point. If nothing matters, if everything is trivial and transitional, why not label oneself a slut, study my poop, and play with nostalgic toys from our childhood. Maybe you don’t own any of the above products but think about how those attitudes might pervade your friends or those around you.
When Urban Outfitters began, they were criticized for selling thrift store clothes back to hipsters for exorbitant prices. Somehow we missed that they’ve morphed into a corporation that sells our own cheap irony, cynicism, self-absorption, triviality, and nostalgia back to us at a far greater cost.
