A Sign Of The Times

This comes from http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Professor Depew is writing The Wrong Company for the Wrong Times.

There are perhaps few companies more directly associated with positive social mood and the long-running bull market than Sharper Image (SHRP). Yesterday the company filed for bankruptcy protection, citing declining sales and profitability.

With more than 180 retail stores, half of which the company will close, it would be easy to dismiss the company's descent into bankruptcy as simply another case of a company failing to adapt to a shifting retail environment fueled by changing consumer shopping behavior and online sales functionality; a sign of the times. Indeed, it may yet be a "sign of the times," but what sign, and of which times?

Sharper Image was born in San Francisco in 1977 as a catalog company selling jogging watches. Within 10 years the company emerged as a publicly traded pioneer in catalog shopping.

Now there is a good chance the company will forever rest beneath a granite-engraved epitaph portraying it as an iconic retailer of nothing but bull market frivolity; automatic massage chairs, vacuuming robots, turbo-charged nosehair trimmers, digital breath alcohol analyzers, whatever you don't need, whenever you don't need it, at prices you couldn't care less about because, hey, if you need to ask how much an electric peppermill that you don't need or want costs, you probably can't afford it anyway.

Sharper Image stores and products have always been busy, frenetic, mirroring a busy and frenetic social experience and the happy optimism of a bright social mood. Of course we need turbo-charged nosehair trimmers; or more precisely, of course we want turbo-charged nosehair trimmers. They're nosehair trimmers. And they're turbo.

Unfortunately, those days of consumer gadget frivolity are quickly fading, a victim of darkening social mood; confusion, lack of control and insecurity force changes in our perceptions that manifest externally as spacial reductions, limitations, the stripping away of clutter and excess that feels heavy, like a weight, like debt.

The new Sharper Image, the right company for the right time, would likely be a company devoted to a single product sold with a minimalist aesthetic via an old-fashioned medium, like, perhaps a company that sells jogging watches through magazine ads. Sounds familiar.

As I stare in amazement at products like the JumpSnap Ropeless Jump Rope I am wondering, How the heck did I ever get along without that? But somehow, as social moods have changed, it's no longer cool to be sharp.

Professor Depew had this take on sharper images and social mood:

One of the oft-discussed themes here in the 'Ville is the change in social moods the unwinding of our debt-based economy is likely to cause. Indeed, consumers' refusal to purchase ropeless jump ropes and other superfluous, overpriced gadgets shows this shift is already occurring.