S&K Menswear, shirtless. And avoidable?

Founded in 1967, Richmond's venerable S&K Menswear joins the list (CFO Mag) of meltdown victims. But was it the meltdown? Maybe it goes back much further to an inflection point they missed, say, 10 years after their founding.

Let's start with a few graphs. (open in new window for bigger) The nosedive one at left shows that being well-dressed for 2009 jobs that just aren't there may not be the best of business models for a struggling business attire company.

The second graph at right shows that S&K's model of dress and business casual is up against a compensation/productivity mismatch akin to stripes and plaids.

What's that mean? Let's look at some history to set up our story of S&K, a company trapped in the 80s.

Casual Fridays showed a loosening of formality in businesses as the Boomer/Levis/Dockers generation took over. But, as dress codes lost their luster, another directive kicked in to match the other 60s-induced self-destruction-prone revamps of American life: Kill organized labor and it's wage negotiating power. Looks like this:

The anti-labor idea had broad appeal thanks to crappy Detroit cars and loose threads on expensive American-made clothing. (Yes, ironically, the same kind of slackness, unaccountability and entitlement mirrored in today's Wall Street and Davos-level management class.) But divorcing labor had specific appeal to American management because they knew a boatload of new technical and procedural efficiencies were creating that higher productivity track in graph two. Notice that the trend logarithm never changes much.

That's because it's the cultural and social perception that changes. Even Rolling Stone magazine grasped this shift in the early 80s with their Perception v. Reality advertising. See:



Indeed, from bra burning to Victoria's Secret, penniless hippies to Amex's "Membership has its priveleges," that 40 degree logarithmic productivity slope meant Money! The gap between it and the compensation trackline means company balance sheets got to keep more, or less, of that made money.

Since executives are paid according to the money they "find" or preserve within that costs/productivity accounting structure (laugh loudly--mua-ha-ha-ha!--when someone tells you management "creates" value), those executives had very personal reasons to de-link and de-leverage the effectiveness of business from the compensation of those doing the effecting.

And there you go, S&K. The guys making money/wages would never shop your store. And the guys losing money/wages needed more than clothes from you to hold their ground.

Which brings us to Hip Siegel's and Abe Kaminsky's creation, S&K Famous Brands, circa 2009.

Go look at their website. Besides the heavy couponing and gift-card offers that are great for S&K banking as much future business as possible to today's balance sheet, where are the VALUE PROPOSITIONS that a working male cares about in 2009? The same place they were when S&K got delisted by NASDAQ in 2005 -- nowhere.

Click around and you find this:

As we celebrate 40 years in business, we remain true to our vision:



We will be the nation's premier menswear retailer, selling quality, stylish merchandise at prices that represent the best value proposition in the market. We will operate attractive stores in high traffic areas that customers aspire to visit, staffed by enthusiastic associates, thereby creating a great shopping experince that helps our customers feel good about how they look.

Umm. That's not vision, that's a squint through goulash-colored glasses. Let's parse it a bit. They do acknowledge the term Value Proposition. That's nice. But we start with an anchor, tied to a cinderblock and chained to a safe: The "nation's premier" anything tends to value camouflage over ideas. Leaders don't talk that way--they do, they challenge, they offer clarity and salvation from something or directions to something. In this case, the directions are to stylish merchandise. Okayyy, then. The rest of the statement is just as, umm, premier. Male customers, especially at this value price point, aspire to a great shopping experince? (Yeah, that's their typo.) Nope.

Now, we'll grant that even Ralph Kramden wanted to feel good about how he looked. But S&K's customer is no metrosexual. He wants shortcuts, secrets, a way to minimize the pain of the premier "shopping experience." Joe Smith or Ralph Kramden need more than enthusiastic associates. In fact, there's many a Honeymooner's episode built around Kramden's eternal search for specialness--shares in a dodgy gold mine, producing a Broadway play, real estate bets, get-rich-quick inventions and even, yes, a clothing line. As brands go in the archetypal library, Kramden was the Everyman, the Regular Guy or Gal.

S&K died because it forgot this, forgot it's own place, as the approachable Sage, provider of Wisdom in that everymans's struggle to survive and get ahead.

I bought my first suit from S&K in 1985, as a newbie copier salesman fresh out of school looking to not appear as lame and nervous as I felt facing all those cold calls. At the same time, I was also enduring sales training and reading whatever I could to make the inside of my head as well-heeled and semi-savvy as the the rest of the body was supposed to look.

Clothes are the avenue to many things. They communicate and cover. Grown-upness. Rebel. Wallflower. Risk or conservatism. In S&K's case, in their particular price band, they also fill a gap between confidence and ability, courage and competence. Clothes don't make the man. They give hope to the man who doesn't believe he's made it. Maybe wonders if he can make it.

S&K ceded this vital ground of professional guidance, the Retail John Malloy/Tom Hopkins partnership back in the late 80s. Jos A. Bank and others such as Men's Wearhouse were already working it to varying degrees of success. Didn't matter. (You don't abandon the appeal of hearty meals because Campbell is pitching Chunky soup.)

That others understood this realm better (but not by much) than S&K was no excuse to wander aimlessly for the next 20 years of workplace change and Everyman wage depression. The options for them were many. Where was their thinking and experimentation? Where was Hip and Abe's Salesman ethic and polish, made real for rubes like me at 23 years of age? And for today's rubes? Wandering through that store, I was a pigeon for new ideas, for a pedestal, or a toolkit, on my journey to becoming a Master of the Universe™. (Young and naive, remember?)

Stylish? Feel good about how they look? Sure. But what S&K's customer really wanted, then as now, was the means to feel good about what they could achieve. And their balance sheet shows how widely they've failed to understand this. S&K isn't selling clothes. They're mentoring Everyman Heroes. And clothes are only one aspect of that training offering.

S&K is in the tank for many reasons, but today's economy is not the reason they're shirtless. In fact, given the above explanations, maybe shirtless is inaccurate. They have one left, the Nessus brand. Too bad. Didn't have to be.