Retailing brands get consumer grades

There’s good news and bad news for central Ohio retailers in an annual survey that asks consumers: Which brands have a great future, and which ones should disappear tomorrow?

Bath & Body Works has a great future, according to the survey of more than 4,000 consumers by the Dublin retail-consulting company WD Partners.

On the other hand, the same consumers don’t seem to care whether Abercrombie & Fitch, Justice and Hollister are around tomorrow. Those Columbus-based brands occupied three of the four bottom spots among 100 brands.

Either way, competition in retail is so wide-ranging that no retailer, even the top brands on the list, can truly stand pat, said John Bajorek, executive vice president of strategic growth and

innovation at WD Partners.

“It’s really challenging,” Bajorek said. “With the availability of product across multiple channels, it’s more challenging than ever. You need to innovate or die. What we’re seeing for many brands is there’s a direct correlation between reinvesting and being successful. They can’t rest on their laurels. That’s where both Amazon and Walmart are winning — they continue to push and imagine and try.”

Walmart and Amazon joined Home Depot, Target and Lowe’s atop the survey, which asked customers which brands “get them, take care of them, and have a great future.”

Columbus-based Bath & Body Works ranked 14th. The L Brands retailer of

bath and beauty products “made a jump up year over year, based primarily on an incredibly flexible and dynamic merchandising strategy,” Bajorek said.

Bath & Body Works did especially well “with digital natives” — customers ages 18 to 29 — “and that’s impressive for an older brand,” he said. “They’re really trying to stay relevant with today’s consumers.”

Bath & Body Works, like all the other brands in the top 15, is “really good at customer service, value and product selection — in most cases, exclusive product selection,” Bajorek said.

On the other hand, brands in trouble with consumers don’t have as many things in common. Each brand was dinged for reasons specific to it.

The worst performer on the list, Abercrombie & Fitch, for example, has suffered from well-known gaffes in positioning its public image and in

product selection.

“But the good news is they improved, and I think we’re seeing some momentum,” Bajorek said. “They are more open to testing now, which I think will make a difference.”

Hollister, a New Albanybased corporate sibling of Abercrombie that ranked fourth-worst, has likewise made improvements, and a deep look at the survey results shows that consumers are responding — at least those consumers in Hollister’s target audience.

“Hollister was ugly with ‘digital immigrants’” — consumers ages 39 and older — “and that’s not Hollister’s market.”

Tween brand Justice, the third-”ugliest” brand, is in an even more peculiar position. “The hard part is the role that parents play with their product,” Bajorek said. “The end consumer may be very young, but if a parent doesn’t believe there’s value, then the kid’s

not going to get the clothes.”

Neither Justice nor Abercrombie officials would comment about the survey.

Abercrombie did recently show up in another survey, by market-research firm Yougov, showing that more consumers older than 18 have a better impression of the chain than they did in 2016.

One well-known Columbus-based brand that was ranked neither high nor low was Victoria’s Secret.

“They ranked kind of mid-pack in the good, and mid-pack in the ugly,” Bajorek said.

That isn’t such a good place to be because “if you’re in the middle of the pack, it means there’s an offering that resonates with some, but it’s kind of a point of indifference — it’s kind of a slow death. So for them to be in the middle on both is more of a ‘watch out!’”