Sales Meeting

Aaaaggh, I'm sitting here reflecting on our annual sales meeting today. Its the one time each year when we bring the stores executives to Minneapolis for something like a town hall meeting on the state of the business, key executive messages, and a forward look at what is to come. I attended the sales meeting for the first time as an intern and I remember it being one of the highlights of my summer because the meeting always includes performances by major artists and that year they managed to have Alicia Keys perform for her last album which at that time hadn't even been released yet. This year, I wasn't as hyped to go in light of all the full time responsibilities I knew were waiting for me back at work (this week is a really bad week at work). There's normally a lot of buzz and speculation prior to the meeting about who the performers will be but this time it was pretty quiet. I'll spare the suspicion and let you know that the first performer was Shakira. I'm not really a fan but her performance was good, although a bit raunchy for a corporate performance (the guys closest to the stage didn't seem to mind though). She did "Hips Don't Lie" and some other song I can't remember. At one point she did some movement to the speakers that might have qualified as sexual harrassment had those speakers been alive. I've always been amazed at how she's able to move her body the way she does. Its ridiculous. She needs to come out with an abs video with all that tummy rolling she does on stage. The second performer was Faith Hill. Again I'm not a fan but it was a good performance. The songs she performed were nice enough. The final performance came at the very end of the meeting and turned out to be the Black Eyed Peas (Fergie included) which the rumor mill had actually predicted correctly. Most artists perform 2 or 3 songs. The Black Eyed Peas must have performed about 5 or 6. They did their current single along my personal favorite (Boom Boom Pow) as well as several older songs. They were extremely energetic and put on an excellent performance, although not so PC for a corporate performance (let's just say expletives came out of will.i.am's mouth on more than one occasion, and not while he was performing either (there's a tendency to talk to us in between songs and thank us for supporting their music). I told my Sr Buyer I think they had hands down the most engaging performance across the entire crowd of any performers I've seen at these meetings in the last 3 years. Its hard to please an arena full of people from all age ranges, backgrounds and regions but somehow they managed to do it. There were other highlights of the meeting as well including some exciting upcoming designer collaborations, marketing initiatives, and launches. I won't give away anything proprietary I promise but I can tell you we got a look at the Anna Sui apparel collection and it looks like its going to be a good one. There were a couple of pieces I'd buy right now. We also saw another designer collaboration that I'm not as excited about but I don't think that one has been announced yet. I also got to see my product featured in some of the advertising that was shown (yay!!!) - I actually nudged my Sr Buyer at one point and said "that's my product!!!" She didn't really know - she's still getting up to speed on what my product looks like. I'm at the point where I can pretty much identify any Target girls sportswear from last november until now, as well as my own category of course. I was at church last sunday and looked around and there was a sea of Mossimo (my former brand) and Cherokee dresses. Anyway I'm starting to get sleepy...its been a long day. Got to go...more later!