The Not-So-Endless Summer

Tags: Business, Promotion,

You’d be hard pressed to find an uglier collection of shoes anywhere in the world assembled on one table (Chanel no less...). But alas, these are the “must-haves” that nobody would have, and now their shelf life has expired. Retailers started moving their tired summer merchandise towards the exits over the July 4th weekend to make way for the full-priced fall collections. Target already has their Back-to-School displays stocked and loaded. Unnerving visual reminders that summer is really already over, like it or not.

I don’t know why we’re not allowed to ease into the summer season anymore, but we’re not.

Try finding a bathing suit worth buying in late June.

Places like Cabela’s (one-cent shipping) and Dick’s Sporting Goods (Football Headquarters) are essentially giving away outdoor gear, apparel, camping and fishing equipment.

And Bed Bath & Beyond is poised and ready for your college student to start outfitting their dorm room.

Schools from the lower grades through college begin classes before Labor Day — once the official end of summer that always made me sad and anxious, knowing how long it would be until the season came again.

Last week I was taking an early morning walk on a private school track, feeling sorry for the hundreds of kids I watched being led outside for their camp and summer enrichment programs.

Do they ever get to sleep in late, stay home, daydream, hang-out without purpose? One week after school ends they’re back on the 7:00 a.m. bus for a full day of planned activities. I know some kids love their camp experience, but still...

So unlike my unsupervised, unplanned, undisciplined summers when the day began whenever I managed to roll out of bed and every waking hour was spent outdoors riding bikes, walking to the pool, hanging with my equally aimless siblings and neighborhood friends, when boredom was an option.

We didn’t have the Internet then, or cell phones, and the thought of going to a store with my mother and interrupting my non-routine was asking way too much.

Now that I think of it, we were blissfully oblivious to all the marketing hype (that I would one day make my life’s work). We hardly knew what day it was and were in no hurry to fill our school bags with new supplies or think beyond the moment. That’s what made summers so special, so endless.

Now, it seems, the retail world defines our seasons for us, creating a sense of urgency that has us stocking up for each occasion before we’re ready; picking through the remnants when they signal it’s time to move on (before we’re ready); hardly noticing they’ve devalued what they convinced us to value just a few weeks and catalogs ago.

Helpless to resist, we breathlessly buy into it.

(Is that Halloween candy I see...?).

Anita Alvare (bio)/Alvare Associates/610-520-6140
Summer   Retail Sales   Chanel Shoes   Cabela’s   Dick’s Sporting Goods  Target
Bed Bath & Beyond