05/01/2015
LONDON, United Kingdom — Since 2011, British department store group Selfridges has kicked off each retail year with its ‘Bright Young Things’ initiative, celebrating fresh young talent in its flagship London store. This year, however, in the place of youth, the department store will celebrate the start of the year with an initiative dubbed Bright Old Things, which will highlight the likes of Molly Parkin, 82, one time fashion editor of The Sunday Times; actor turned painter William Forbes Hamilton, 82; and retailer-turned-designer Nick Wooster, 55.The focus on older people is timely. According to statistics compiled by consulting firm AT Kearney, consumers aged 60 and older spent more than $8 trillion worldwide in 2010. What’s more, by the end of this decade that figure will have jumped to $15 trillion, making it essential for retailers to successfully engage older consumers and tap the opportunity presented by the ‘grey pound’ — or ‘gray dollar’ or ‘gray euro’ — as the case may be.For the Selfridges initiative, each of the fourteen “Bright Old Things” has designed a window display for the store’s Oxford Street frontage. “We didn’t think of it as a commercial project from the beginning, but it became really apparent that because of the ageing population we have, of course it must be the case,” said Linda Hewson, creative director of Selfridges. “Obviously it will open up our brand to people that have not connected with it before. Our offer has to represent everybody — male, female, young, old.”Globally, people over 60 comprise one of the world’s fastest-growing consumer demographics. According to the United Nations’ World Population Prospects report, the share of people who are over 60 is increasing at a rate of 2.6 percent per year, more than double overall global population growth. By 2030, 36 percent of Germans, 30 percent of the French, 30 percent of Chinese and 22 percent of Americans will be older than 60.What’s more, older people are often the richest. In the US, people over the age of 50 own 80 percent of the country’s financial assets and are responsible for half of the country’s discretionary spending, according to AT Kearney. In the United Kingdom, a study conducted by Abbey, the building society and mortgage lender, found that 34 percent of the over-50s population accounts for nearly 75 percent of the country’s total wealth.So, how can fashion retailers tap the opportunity?On a basic level, retailers must make shopping environments and selling …
