Jay Kos marches to the beat of his own drummer. The fact that he carries absolutely beautiful suits is well known, but he also offers a very nice hat selection (any selection at all is getting hard to find in NYC) and he also devotes a surprising amount of space in his Lexington Ave. store to children's wear.
What Jay does, though, that is really unheard of is offering season appropriate clothing that actually reflects the weather outside.
Each season designers ship (at the request of stores) their collections earlier and earlier, to the point that you can bet the coldest day of the year will see the new Spring collection hitting the sales floor. I'm all for keeping stores looking fresh with new merchandise but the whole system is now out of whack. Some price-points have figured out how to do this well (like women's designer bridge collections) by shipping 11 or 12 months of the year but even they are really too early with a lot of styles.
In menswear this usually works in our favor, If you can just hold off on that seersucker suit that you first saw in January, you could buy it on sale (May 25th) before it is ever warm enough to actually wear it.
I give Jay credit; stores have always told me that competitive store markdowns really test customer loyalty .
I think it speaks to the power of offering unique products and strong customer service in keeping customer loyal while markdowns are everywhere.
So what do you think?
Do you like buying shorts in a snowstorm?