THE INSIDE LINE: Sunwear Retail Rundown

From specialty sunglass chains to major department stores, retailers share the inside story on what’s selling, how they sell it, and how they merchandise plano sunwear. Read on to get the competitive sunwear scoop.

BY BARBARA THAU

Selling Sunwear (top to bottom): APEX by Sunglass Hut, Eyetique, Dillard’s sunglass department, and a Solstice Sunglasses display

Plano sunwear is heating up optical sales at retail.

Today’s savvier sunwear shoppers are gravitating toward both premium brands and performance-driven product features that reflect key lifestyle trends, such as health and fitness, embraced by emerging demographic groups (we’re talking about you, millennials).

At the same time, retailers are sharpening their focus on crafting high-service, experiential shopping environments amid the encroachment of e-commerce.

Their efforts appear to be paying off. For the year ended September 2015, plano sunwear generated $4.1 billion in retail sales, up 5.3% from the year before, according to The Vision Council.

And sunwear sales lit up across retail sectors. At sunglass specialty stores, the biggest channel for the category, boasting 39.3% of the business at retail, sales jumped 5.1% year over year.

At better department stores and specialty stores—Bloomingdale’s, Dillard’s, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Saks Fifth Avenue—the second biggest retail channel with 14.2% of the plano sunwear business, sales rose 4.1% from 2014 to 2015.

One recurring theme driving the sales gains: “The market. Consumer preference has shifted to more desire for luxury, high-end, or well-recognized brands,” says Fabrizio Gamberini, CEO of Marcolin USA, which sells plano sunwear to a variety of retail channels.

Eyecare Business checked in with Dillard’s department stores, Solstice Sunglasses, Apex by Sunglass Hut, and the Eyetique optical chain on the trends and merchandising strategies fueling their plano sunwear assortments. The results are in…

Dillard’s

INTEL: Dillard’s sunwear business has been undergoing an upscale makeover. Tony sunwear shops featuring a new mix of high-end brands like Versace, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Burberry, “which were unheard of at Dillard’s in recent history,” have recently been rolled out to 40 of the department store’s 275 stores, says Julie Bull, vice president of investor relations. The shops will eventually roll out to all stores.

These open-sell shops replace a common department store selling tactic used by retailers such as Macy’s and J.C. Penney. The ubiquitous approach, whereby product is locked away in enclosed glass counters and shoppers must ask a sales associate to access it, now runs counter to Dillard’s merchandising philosophy.

STRATEGY: In a bid to break down the barriers to access, the retailer designed its new sunwear shops “to create a play-learn-and-discover environment so that merchandise is at the fingertips of customers,” says Bull.

What’s more, Dillard’s is adding sunwear specialists to stores.

The idea of department specialists, such as Michael Kors handbag experts, reflects a chain-wide initiative to elevate customer service for the retailer’s affluent shoppers, Bull says.

Sunwear specialists have been charged with immersing themselves “in all things sunwear, and to work with the brands to learn about new [products] and technology,” notes Bull.

BOTTOM LINE: “We made a concerted effort to create a differentiation between ourselves and traditional department stores,” by moving the assortment up market, so that now the chain is positioned above Macy’s and below Nordstrom, Bull says. As a result, “we couldn’t carry [some of] the same brands as the more promotional department stores.”

Solstice Sunglasses

INTEL: When it comes to plano sunwear, directional fashion lines are steamrolling sales at Solstice Sunglasses, says Jan Michel, senior vice president of the 135-store chain. These days, “the product needs to be special to convince the consumer to buy, and the luxury market is leading the pack.”

In turn, the results have been “dramatic,” says Alessandro Marcer, creative director of Safilo USA, which, like Solstice Sunglasses, is part of Safilo Group.

That being said, the highly embellished looks that took center stage in prior seasons have given way to a new crop of best-selling styles that “are focused on strong geometric shapes, negative space—a frame within a frame with cut out/open space—and unexpected material mixes, all done in a contemporary way,” Michel says.

And shoppers are not batting an eye when it comes to paying a premium for high-end assortments. “All of this detailing has led to a higher average unit retail, which hasn’t deterred the customer,” Michel says.

And at the “good” end of the good-better-best equation, “products with a high price/value relationship are resonating with our consumer. In this segment, color, prints, and mirrored lenses are key.”

STRATEGY: In Solstice stores, logos are featured above each sunwear collection to make it easy for consumers shopping by brand. “We make sure that we offer an effective assortment of SKUs per collection in order to show the breadth of each brand’s offerings,” Michel says.

Solstice also promotes particular brands and trends on display tables and wall units, and rotates the brands and visuals featured in the store windows on a monthly basis to “keep the store feeling fresh and new and to draw people into our stores,” she says.

In the era of online shopping, Solstice is consistently marketing plano sunwear from a “brick-and-click” perspective, Michel says.

SOCIAL MEDIA: To stand apart from competitors, Solstice created original content for online social channels with monthly themes “based on where our customers’ thoughts are based on the time of year”—selecting frame styles that mirror those themes, Michel says.

“During the summer, we chose bright colors and fruits to convey the moods and tastes of the season. For winter, we will do winter sports themes or vacation spots of where the customer is daydreaming of escaping to, such as a beach resort or desert,” says Michel.

“This helps our customer make an emotional connection to Solstice by seeing the product in a way that is uniquely our own. Throughout the year, we’ve been promoting posts and giveaways, tracking which ones resonated most with our customer.”

Apex by Sunglass Hut

INTEL: Apex launched in 2008 to fill a market void for sport performance eyewear. Its timing was fortuitous.

Since then, a health and wellness trend has propelled sales of everything from “athleisure wear,” the star of the apparel market, to organic food. The health trend has also created a bigger appetite for active and sport-specific eyewear.

“The days of owning one pair of sunglasses are no more,” says Bobby Dean, senior category manager for Apex by Sunglass Hut, which has 30 stores nationwide. “You need multiple sunglasses for different activities.”

While category specialists like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Sunglass Hut carry a limited assortment of active eyewear, Apex is a destination for the category, Dean says. Countervailing trends are fueling the plano sunwear business at the chain, which has grown to 30 stores.

As the sports eyewear industry also “becomes more mainstream,” many performance brands are expanding their design language to include much more fashion, says Dean, while also honing in on cutting-edge performance features. Key to selling these features is a highly trained sales staff of product experts, he says.

STRATEGY: Apex saw that consumer education is integral to selling performance sunwear and upgraded its Explorer Chamber in-store technology last year. Consumers pick a sport like mountain biking or cycling from a large touch screen, which simulates that sport in a first-person scene.

Hence, a consumer can experience a pair of cycling sunwear, for example, in the outdoor weather conditions in which they’d be worn, complete with more wind the faster they go.

In addition, while traditional sunwear retailers often merchandise by brand, Apex’s product assortments are displayed by theme: Active, Polarized, and Sports-Inspired.

Eyetique

INTEL: At the 14-store Eyetique, a highly trained staff, distinct product assortment in a multi-sensory shopping environment, and the human touch of preternaturally friendly store associates are key to the sale of plano sunglasses, says founder Norman Childs.

“We hire people on personality first and product second,” he says. They are then rigorously trained, and paid well. “You can’t just hire people at minimum wage and expect them [to give their all],” he says. “You have to pay them well, and they’ll perform a lot better.”

STRATEGY: And for the consumer, the delight is in the details.

“Everybody who walks through the door gets the royal treatment,” he says. “The first thing we offer them is a bottle of water or a cup of coffee. You’re going to hear great music, smell fresh coffee brewing, and see fresh flowers and an unbelievably extensive collection at most pricepoints.”

Eyetique’s sunwear assortment ranges from about $150 for a pair of Ray-Ban frames to $5,000 for Cartier frames with stones.

The retailer sets itself apart from the competition by offering exclusive, less widely distributed boutique lines, such as Theo and Face à Face, and its biggest-selling brand is its proprietary Norman Childs Eyewear collection.

To effectively sell those brands, staff has been highly trained to understand shoppers’ optical wants and needs, Childs says.

For one, most of Eyetique’s opticians are ABO-certified, a point of pride for the retailer as the certification is not mandatory in Pennsylvania, where most of the stores are based.

Hence, high-level consumer questions like “‘Is there distortion in these lenses?’ can be answered by a person who understands optics,” Childs says.

MARKETING: Eyetique gets out its marketing message via print ad campaigns and local TV spots that feature a rotating roster of local celebrities, such as Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and musician Wiz Khalifa, as well as billboards, email blasts, and Facebook and Twitter promotions.

At the end of the day, “sunglasses are a commodity business,” Childs says. “But if you can provide points of differentiation and added value, all of a sudden, you’re not a commodity business anymore.”

Barbara Thau is a contributing writer at Forbes.com, where she writes about the intersection of retail and consumer trends.