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The Airport Experience Now Includes Shopping for the Family

After visits to malls plummeted during the recession — and have yet to bounce back — many mass-market retailers stepped up their search for other locations to lure shoppers.

Places where people might be bored. And unable to leave. One time-tested answer: airports.

While luxury stores set up shops in airports long ago to attract duty-free international shoppers, retailing in many domestic terminals was limited to newsstands and the occasional shop selling coffee mugs and local smoked meat. The real diversity in airport shopping was in the food concessions.
“Airports are becoming, really, a service facility, like a shopping mall,” said Jose Gomez, senior vice president for business development for Mango, the fashion retailer.

While clothing and specialty luggage and electronics stores aimed at male shoppers — like Johnston & Murphy, Brooks Brothers and Brookstone — have been fixtures at airports, the new wave of stores moves beyond the businessman traveler to include teenagers, women and bargain shoppers.

Mango recently opened two stores at San Francisco International Airport. It will open one in the Orlando airport this fall and plans more airport locations in the next two years. Victoria’s Secret opened seven airport stores in 2010 and 2011.

Muji, a Japanese housewares and apparel store, has opened two airport locations, and Sean John, the clothing line by Sean Combs, a k a Diddy or P. Diddy, has a store in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which has grown from “news and gift and generic concepts” to “almost complete retail diversity” over the last 10 years, said Paul Brown, director of concessions at the airport.

Even Brooks Brothers — which was one of the first clothing stores to expand into airports, opening its first airport store in 1999 — is riding the wave, with plans to add about five stores a year to the 26 it already has in the United States. And overseas, the fashion retailers H&M and Zara have each opened several airport stores.

The draw of the airport location is simple: an attentive clientele. “After security, you’re locked up,” Mr. Gomez of Mango said.

Domestic travelers spend more than an hour, on average, waiting in airports once they have passed security, said Gerry Cecci, vice president for airport management at the Westfield Group the mall company, which manages retail sites at airports including Boston, Newark and Miami.

“Someone may have a street concept or a mall concept that’s very successful, and bringing it to the airport environment, you capitalize on the captive audience and on the dwell time,” Mr. Cecci said.

Retailers say that sales per square foot are higher at airports than they are in mall or street locations — especially when it is raining or snowing and flights are delayed.

“We have a motto — bad weather is good for business,” said Paulette Garafalo, president for wholesale, international and marketing at Brooks Brothers. “Whenever there’s bad weather, we enjoy a hearty day. It’s the polar opposite of retail here.”

Making money in retailing at the airport, though, requires some adjustments to the traditional sales model. Stores are smaller, and the customers are often rushed, or at least very time-conscious. A premium is placed on convenience.

“Though there is a dressing room where you can try on dresses, maybe people are not so much inclined to try on, because they don’t have a lot of time,” Mr. Gomez of Mango said. “So accessories and tops sell better.”

Retailers also have to alter the layout of stores. Aisles have to be wide enough for luggage, and the pristine storefront displays used in malls often have to be tossed aside in favor of more open concepts and the stacking of merchandise at the store’s entrance.

“They figure out that removing the plate window glass and opening up is turning out to be a great idea,” said Mr. Brown of the Atlanta airport. STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

When Dieting Becomes a Role to Play

SHE calls it wishful shrinking. Last May, Carrie Fisher showed off her 30-pound weight loss, a result of 18 weeks on the Jenny Craig diet, to People magazine — the most recent of the company’s series of celebrity spokeswomen to reach a major milestone in weight loss.

It’s understandable that diet companies would want to incorporate celebrities in their marketing plans. Consumers believe that they “know” famous people — especially forthcoming ones like Valerie Bertinelli (Jenny Craig), Jennifer Hudson (Weight Watchers) and Marie Osmond (Nutrisystem) — and can be inspired by them.

But employing celebrities can be a double-edged sword. When a company 

advertises a successful but anonymous dieter — say, Melissa K. from Fairfield, Conn., who lost 50 pounds— its target audience never learns how Melissa ultimately fared. Did she keep the weight off? Did she gain the 50 pounds back, as well as 50 more? Only she and her acquaintances will ever know.

Famous people, however, play out their weight struggles under glaring lights. It’s hard to forget commercials of the actress and former Jenny Craig spokeswoman Kirstie Alley lustily drooling over the program’s sanctioned fettuccine, or of her triumphant disrobing on “Oprah” to reveal her new bikini body in pantyhose.

It’s equally hard to forget photos of Ms. Alley, after regaining the lost weight and then some, again on “Oprah”: this time more conservatively dressed and contrite. Or, more recently, falling with an audible thud during a lift on “Dancing With the Stars.”


Last year, another diet program, the Fresh Diet, parted ways with its famous “spokesdieter,” the pop singer Carnie Wilson, after she gained weight while under contract.

“It didn’t work out with Carnie,” said Zalmi Duchman, chief executive for the Fresh Diet, which delivers fresh meals daily across the nation. “She dropped like 20 pounds in the first three months. Then she, I mean, she had to go off of it. There’s no question. She might have eaten the meals, but she ate the meals with a lot of other stuff. She started a cheesecake company.”

Mr. Duchman said he didn’t fire Ms. Wilson; he chose not to renew her contract. (Ms. Wilson and Ms. Alley declined to comment for this article.)

The specter of Ms. Alley’s and Ms. Wilson’s failure on these diet programs has done nothing to deter Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig from gathering a slew of other celebrities to represent them.

But Nutrisystem is being more cautious. The company’s current spokeswoman and spokesman, Ms. Osmond and Dan Marino, the former Miami Dolphin, were not used as guinea pigs, said Stacie Mullen, its executive of celebrity marketing, but were approached after news reports that they used the program. “We have gained our celebrity spokespeople through them being real clients first,” Ms. Mullen said. “We learned about Marie as a client of ours through an entertainment magazine.”

Jenny Craig is pursuing celebrity spokeswomen more voraciously. “We are interested in helping any celebrity lose weight,” said Dana Fiser, the chief executive for Jenny Craig. Indeed, the company currently employs six celebrities: Ms. Bertinelli, Ms. Fisher, the actress Sara Rue, Jason Alexander, the actress Nicole Sullivan and the reality show personality Ross Mathews.

Not everyone agrees with this strategy. Cheryl Callan, chief marketing officer for Weight Watchers, said she suspected that what she called her competitors’ “parade” of celebrities is a method of distraction.

“It may be about spreading risk,” she said. In other words, if Ms. Bertinelli regains weight, members of the public won’t notice because they’re too captivated by Ms. Fisher’s success.

Collecting celebrity spokeswomen is not the Weight Watchers way. In its history, there have been only four celebrity spokeswomen for the company: Lynn Redgrave, Jenny McCarthy, Sarah Ferguson and, now, Ms. Hudson, who said she has lost 80 pounds on the plan.TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER