WAREHOUSE WRAP-UP: How To Fix Barney's Warehouse Sale —Because It's Totally Busted

The Barneys New York Warehouse Sale ended yesterday, one extended week after it had originally been scheduled to, and the overall response, as surveyed not only by The Shophound, but other blogs that follow such things like Racked and Sample Sally to name a few, was pretty tepid. In fact, this was the first season in a while when The Shophound could not find a single thing we felt compelled to buy, even when the final, final markdowns were posted. Though there was reportedly an early morning line to get in on opening day, we breezed in around noon that day to find a light crowd at best, and minimal if any checkout lines. Even on the last weekend of the sale, when merchandise was at its most reduced prices, we were surprised not to see the long lines of shoppers with armloads of goods at the checkout that we used to count on. What had only a few years ago been a bonanza finale to the clearance season that eager shoppers would call in sick from work and line up at the crack of dawn for was now greeted with a collective shrug from a city full of the savviest bargain hunters in America. At times we had heard reports that Barneys' more recently installed management was looking to phase out the downmarket Warehouse Sale entirely, and was deliberately toning it down, but such news was refuted, and the sale continues to be held, though it is now a wan, thinly stocked version of its former self.

This year the sale was just plain sloppy and halfhearted. In past seasons, management has toyed with a failed reconfiguration of the familiar set-up in Chelsea's Co-op store, and more recently tried to downsize the schedule by a week, which was thwarted by a hurricane the first time, and just plain extended this season. Even in it's somewhat diminished state, the Sale resists attempts to be changed, but here are a few ways that it could be improved and returned to being the kind of un-missable shopping event and big moneymaker it once was.

After the jump, The Shophound suggests six ways to make the sale a better, more successful experience for all involved

1. GET ORGANIZED
   This season, the Sale had an ever changing configuration suggesting that nobody (or at least nobody decisive) was in charge of arranging the sale to allow for optimum shopping. This was particularly true in parts of the men's section, where at times there were three separate areas of casual trousers, for example, with no perceivable differences between them. The shirts were arbitrarily split up, and there were sweaters over here and some others over there... it was a confusing mess. Nobody's expecting full retail merchandising and service, but it shouldn't be so complicated just to shop for pants in your size.
2. MOVE THE DAMN THING!
   Maybe its time to get this event out of the Chelsea Co-op, and into a bigger, more efficient space that might actually be a real warehouse. Granted, such spaces might be difficult to find in Manhattan, but we have seen them. A more efficient space would help goods sell faster, which might help Barneys' goal of shrinking the sale to about a week. Don't rule out the possibility of moving it to an easily accessible space in Brooklyn. People will go out of their way if you make it worth their while.
   The other obvious advantage for Barneys as a company would be that they wouldn't have to shut down the otherwise busy Chelsea Co-op location for a total of six weeks of full price selling per year.
3. MARK DOWN IMMEDIATELY
   Experienced shoppers have learned that merchandise is not marked down again between Barneys' full-line stores' clearance and the Warehouse Sale. The weak crowds during the first days of this season's Sale suggest that nobody wants go to a dusty basement to pay the same price they could have paid a few weeks earlier in the comfort and more civilized atmosphere of a regular Barneys store. Starting with discounts on the first day would create a sense of urgency for customers to start shopping right away instead of waiting a few days or even a week for the inevitable additional savings.
4. MARK YOUR PRICES CLEARLY
   This would seem obvious, but this season, we saw more and more merchandise with poorly marked prices, tags that had only the original full price, or, in many cases, partial, ripped tags that indicated no price at all. How, exactly, is anyone to decide to buy anything without knowing the price? This goes back to point #1, and reflects on the archaic markdown process at Barneys, which is the last major store in the city to use the inefficient practice of marking down price tags manually with red pens. Seriously.
   Will all the efforts Barneys management is making towards remodeling and updating the Madsion Avenue flagship, isn't it time to put some resources toward bringing their markdown systems into the 21st century?
5. GET RID OF THE OLD GOODS
   This season, we saw more and more things that looked familiar from last season's sale, and the one before that, too. Why not mark this stuff down and get rid of it in a previous season section? Constantly seeing aged merchandise is one of the reasons that people are less excited about the Sale. As any shopkeeper knows, if nobody wanted it six months ago, nobody's going to want it now. Get rid of it.
6. MANAGE OFF-PRICE MERCHANDISE MORE CAREFULLY
   Barneys has always supplemented the Warehouse Sale offerings with off-price merchandise that comes directly from vendors that was never sold in regular full-line stores. Sometimes this merchandise can include great bargains, particularly in sections like Men's Suits, but sometimes, especially when it doesn't sell well, it can overtake some sections like kudzu (or men's cargo pants). Maybe some of this merchandise should be put in its own special section and specially priced to move instead of clogging the racks and making it harder to shop for the stuff people really want.

Whether or not Barneys is interested in improving the sale, or even holding it at all anymore, is beyond us, but if they are going to keep having it, they ought to do it right.