Five years ago, we first learned about Hot Topic from a story on NPR. Yes, we're old. Get off our lawn, you goddamned kids!
Five years later, the dark and scary™ mall store is going soft:
"The desire is not to make the store 'not gothic-y,' it's merely to reflect what's going on in the music scene. Our store design has always reflected the music environment of the time. In the '90s, when the pop-punk and rave scene blew up, our stores became 'the tunnel,' modeled after an underground club," Darrell Kinsley, Hot Topic's vice president of merchandising, marketing and store design, told MTV News. "And now, with the whole indie movement — the emo, the hardcore — our stores are evolving again."
Crap. Now where are we going to buy our Misfits t-shirts? (Which are still cool, by the way, no matter what anybody says.)
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WTF?
"And now, with the whole indie movement — the emo, the hardcore — our stores are evolving again."
NOW they realize what EMO is? Fuck, EMO is so 1997. And Hardcore? I didn't know there were any hardcore bands still alive.....other than Bad Brains.
But this tidbit is pure gravy:
"Even when the stores were dark we had SpongeBob, and people were opinionated about that," he said. "Hopefully people will see our commitment to music and realize that we're still the same store."
SpongeBob?
And "same store?" But isn't the redesign intended make it a different store?
Being in the retail industry I deal with this type of talk all day long. It's industry jibberish designed to keep stockholders happty. When a company tries to communicate to the media like that they risk destroying credibility with their customer base.