Three very different issues

Majority of wealthy people are over 55’. Don’t worry I am not returning to the subject of the previous two posts. After my first scan of the headline I thought it said ‘the majority of people over 55 are wealthy’. I wonder how many others made this mistake? Anyway, the headline was in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph and commented upon a new report from Data Monitor about the wealth distribution in the UK. I am sure it is a snip at £4,000.

According to Datamonitor, there are now more ‘high net worth’ consumers (people with over £200,000 in liquid assets) who are 75+ than in any other age group, which is an interesting fact. The article then goes on about SKIing (Spending the Kids' Inheritance), the subject of yesterday’s post. Another daft marketing term for the collection.


It is sad that Levi Strauss & Co. is going to close all of its manufacturing plants in the United States and Canada. That’s 2,000 jobs destroyed.

This was a depressing statement ‘the company has struggled in recent years to connect with younger consumers. In an effort to bounce back, the company has designed more clothes to appeal to teenagers and young adults, and cut costs to lower the prices of its jeans. The company also entered the discount jeans market earlier this summer with a new brand called Signature that is sold in Wal-Mart stores’.

So there you have it – they changed their product to sell to a new consumer group that is incredibly fickle about fashion, abandoned their old customer base, reduced their prices and became identified with a supermarket discounter, and failed. What a surprise.

This has absolutely nothing to do with 50+ marketing but it does provide a very different take on the impending retirement of a slew lot of baby boomers. Thanks to PR Newswire for the article ‘Companies Facing Massive Exodus of Key, Experienced Workers’
The premise of the article is that many companies have failed to predict the bulge in staff retiring in the next few years. Doom, gloom and catastrophe await

I just sense that it is not long before headlines like ‘Grandparents plug the corporate resourcing gap’ start appearing.