A
chain of
retail stores
incorporated in
Texas in the
1980s. In the mid-to-late
'80s, Gadzooks stores would
pop up in
shopping malls and
blow everyone away with how
cool they were: lots of their
early business revolved around selling
skateboards and
skateboard accessories. They also sold
clothes, but they were clothes that wouldn't make you feel like either a
nerd or a
fashion sell-out -- lots of
funny T-shirts and general
Coolwear.
But then...
success struck! Gadzooks stores were wildly
popular with
teenagers of all
social classes, and the
owners decided that they really liked success. How could they become even more
successful? Well, get rid of all that
skater crap for a start -- it didn't bring in that much
money, and the more
affluent teens were sometimes
scared off by
skaters and
punks. Next, bring in the more
expensive, more
fashionable, more
popular brands of
clothing.
Redecorate the stores to make them more
hip. Hire
hip teens to sell the
hip clothes.
And suddenly, Gadzooks was just another
shallow mall clothing store.
The
last straw: walking into a Gadzooks several years ago with a
fat wad of cash I got for
Christmas and realizing that (A) there was
nothing in the store I could wear without looking like a
mindless plastic frat-rat and (B) the
salesgirls were
too busy doing their
nails and
flirting with
mindless plastic frat-rats to help me find the clothes I wanted to buy. I walked out and spent my
money on stuff from
Penney's. Yeah, it was all
geeky, but it was more
affordable, and the
sales staff didn't treat me like a
freak.
And as of 2003, the chain has
jettisoned clothing for guys and become just another
mall store for
shallow girls, which suggests to me that the end for Gadzooks is only a few years away. There are already
lots of
clothing stores with
merchandise for
shallow girls in the mall, and Gadzooks doesn't do anything to distinguish themselves from the crowd. Besides, half of the people who went into Gadzooks stores before, went in to look at all the
funny T-shirts they sold. Without those, they don't have as much
walk-in traffic, which translates into fewer
impulse customers, which translates into the company going
belly-up eventually.