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All She is Saying is Give Scarves a Chance
04/10/09
Colleen Olexiuk arrived in Anaheim, CA, for CAMEX 2009 with a bit of a problem.
The general merchandise manager of the University of Alberta Bookstore, Edmonton, Canada, was happy to be one of the speakers for the Selling Fashion in Your College Store educational session at, but found she was limited to just 20 minutes to talk fashion.
"I could talk for four hours," Olexiuk said with a laugh. "When I was asked to talk about fashion, I decided I wanted to pick one item to show because attendees are asking themselves 'What do I want?', 'What do I do?' That's why I brought all those scarves and showed how to wear them."
"I think scarves are the new jewelry," she added. "Girls have a lot of jewelry. They should have as many scarves."
That's very possible at the U of A Bookstore store because scarves come in so many shapes and sizes, and Olexiuk is so enthusiastic about stocking them.
"I think the thing that intrigued me at first was kind of a burnt velvet pashmina," she recalled. "We started with those and they sold really fast. Then I bought a pashmina in paisley and sold all of them, and it's been building and building from there.
"I bought 144 plain pashminas just before CAMEX and I think I have three left."
The pashmina is a type of cashmere made from the wool of the pashmina goat, which lives at the higher altitudes of the Himalayas. The wool is woven into gauzy, open-weave fiber shawl that became a fashion craze in North America in the mid-1990s. A pashmina ranges in size from scarf (12in. x 60in.), to wrap or stole (28in. x 80in.), to full-sized shawl (36in. x 80in.). Traditional scarves are made of all sorts materials, ranging from cotton to silk.
"For the real high-quality pashminas, you have to spend between $400-$500," said Peter Adams, buyer for the University of Regina Bookstore, Regina, SK, Canada. "What we have are blends. Technically, a woman could come in and say they are not really pashminas, so we are saying ours are fashion scarves."
Olexiuk pointed out scarves come in a wide variety of shapes, designs, and materials. Fringe and metallic thread are hot design options in scarves, as are polka dots and stars.
"Where I come from in Canada, we do buy scarves to keep warm, but these are not like the big wooly scarves," Olexiuk explained. "The girls just like the fashion. What really sells is the pinks and blues and greens. All really bright colors and they sell to all ages.
"They are inexpensive, pretty, make the store look interesting, and they don't take up much space. They are such a conversation piece and they come in such a variety of colors, but make sure you get at least four or five colors because two or three just doesn't cut it."
The U of A Bookstore adds an interesting twist to all the hues by displaying the scarves like a multicolor skirt on a pair of white wire mannequins nicknamed Blanche and Annette.
"They are identical twins," said U of A Bookstore Assistant General Merchandise Manager Joe Rollheiser with a chuckle, adding the staff named the mannequins because Blanche derives from blanc, the French word for white and the forms look like 'a net.' "We bought them originally to hang jewelry on, but when we went into the scarf thing, we decided we could do this with it. We create kind of a dance of the seven veils.
"And it's easy to shop. Customers can just pull the scarf out and if they don't like it, they just poke it back in."
That makes the scarves the perfect impulse purchase. Olexiuk keeps Blanche and Annette near the front of the store, full of scarves priced from $6.95-$16.95. The most expensive scarf she's ever carried was a wool pashmina at $19.95.
"We have a lot of scarves and have a lot of fun putting them out on display," she said. "One day, a girl came in with an 85-cent eraser in her hand. She said to me she only came in to buy the eraser, but now that she saw the scarves, she had to have one.
"Kids are stressed at school. They've got a lot of work to do and not a lot of money. When you're under stress, you tend to buy yourselves treats. This is fun and cute, so I think it's the same kind of purchase."
"They sell out in probably a week," Rollheiser said of the scarves. "Last year at our Canadian conference, the University of Regina told how it sold over 3,000 scarves and has created an event."
The Regina number is now more than 10,000 since February 2008, and all for $5.95 apiece. The U of R store uses a phone pool, e-mail blasts, and word of mouth to let customers know when a new shipment arrives.
"It's the strangest thing, but when we put them out, we have women on campus who will tell their friends," Adams said. "We get another 500 about every 10 days. But the secret was to keep it low as far as the price-point goes. If we would have charged $9.95, we wouldn't have sold as many.
"If I could find something the men would like as much, it would be great."
Olexiuk has found plenty of positives in four years of selling scarves. Her staff gets excited about working with the items, which in turn keeps the store looking fresh and people from the university and surrounding community coming in to see what's new.
"It's not how many you sell. The scarves just add so much flavor to your store and are that hook to get the kids in," she said. "Our kids are here all the time for four years. If they see the same old stuff in the store, they won't come in."
Scarves also tend to be inexpensive. Olexiuk estimates a store can get started for as little as $500. The only possible downside to the experiment is stores may become a fashion stop, which requires attention to keep current.
"All of a sudden, you have a little fashion boutique and you've got to keep it up. But why wouldn't you want to keep your store interesting and fun?" she asked. "So many stores are scared to try something like this, but what they don't realize is they are already doing it. We all know we have to have the rah-rah football stuff, but then the girls add something like a scarf to it they can wear it to the club later."
The other possible concern is how much longer the scarf fad will last. Even Olexiuk has no answer to that.
"There is nothing new under the sun, as we well know, but scarves for the last four years have been increasing, increasing, increasing," she said. "How long it will last is the $64,000 question, but what's interesting is how they keep changing the designs."
—Dan Angelo
Sound Off!
bill Higbee (bill_higbee@college-kids.net) 4/10/2009 10:28:42 AM
Here''s another:
College Kids - Neenah, WI 800-556-2036
Dan Angelo (dangelo@nacs.org) 4/10/2009 10:25:16 AM
Here are two vendors suggested by Colleen Olexiuk, general merchandise manager, University of Alberta Bookstore, Edmonton.
KW Fashion Corp.-kwfashion@yahoo.com in New York, phone (212)213-1561
Picabo Importations Inc.-in Montreal, phone (514) 543.4908-
Donna Davenport (davenpod@union.edu) 4/10/2009 10:16:23 AM
Do you have a list of vendors for scarves?
Bill Higbee (bill_higbee@college-kids.net) 4/10/2009 10:14:28 AM
We couldn''t agree more about the rave on scarves. As a matter of fact, College Kids came out with fashion scarves this year in Shore Blue, Pink Crush, Oxford, White and Navy. They are 60" long by 5 1/2" wide in a 1 by 1 rib 100% cotton. We can screen print on them too to add your school word mark, or 1 or 2 color school mascot. They''re hot!
Lori Henry (lhenry@clarion.edu) 4/10/2009 8:46:12 AM
I would be willing to try scarves but I have no vendors to get them from. Can you tell me where to purchase them? Thanks, Lori
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