BDITORTAL

At the mid-point of the 1990s, it's clear that products are undergoing a revolution. Vast changes are occurring in product design, type and manufacture. Inventory mix is changing, as well as the reasons why some SKUs fail and some succeed. Comfortable old buying patterns are being turned on their ear.

Demographic shifts have produced some startling changes in what kinds of products people want. Single mothers have different shopping requirements than traditional moms. Aging baby boomers confound the experts, continuing to spend on themselves, not save. Seniors now live far longer. Their buying habits can trip up socalled experts who still think grandma is sitting on the porch shelling peas for dinner.

Manufacturers once blindly assumed consumers would faithfully maintain the products they purchased. Forget that. Most people today are far too busy to spend what little free time they have washing the siding, acid bathing bricks or oiling and waxing household machinery and appliances. Those days are gone forever.

DAVID CUTLER editor.publisher

The product mix now can vary hugely from region to region, even neighborhood to neighborhood. One product for all often won't work. Mass merchant Target has found that its local managers are the best judges of what goes locally. As a result, what goes on the shelves of their various stores is affected by area income, ethnicity, tradition, fads, managerial intuition, and who knows what else. Target feels it is the key to their current success in a tough market for softgoods retailers.

The challenge is to meet the customers' rapidly changing needs and wants, a mofing target if ever there was one. Just scanning the New Products section each month isn't enough. You also need to know your customers as fully as possible, keeping close track of neighborhood and sales territory shifts, what's in/out on the national and local scene, Generation X's latest enthusiasm. remodeling and construction trends, new colors and on and on.

It's not impossible to do, just difficult. But those who ignore the waves of change are likely to be engulfed by them.