Payless Shoes Marketing Stunt

Payless Shoes took over an old Armani store in Santa Monica, named it Palessi, added a zero to all of their prices, then invited a bunch of “influencers” to a grand opening… and the hilarity ensues. One person payed $640 for a pair of $64 Payless boots… they intercepted all of the people who bought shoes, interviewed them, then gave them their money back but let them keep the shoes. Nice move Payless. I’m not sure it will bring anyone in the door, but it shows how much perception alters reality.

Wow of course it’s gonna get some people in. But I doubt that the ones who payed the overpriced goods will pay its real price. There’s something in consumers about paying high just for the sake of that feeds their inner self.

Please define overpriced. And while you are at it, please define the difference between Payless and any luxury brand.

I guess I didn’t explain myself enough but it’s not rocket science that Pallesi are just overpriced Payless shoes in this particular case. My point is, I would like to see if those customers would’ve buy those shoes at the “real” price or they’ll just pass. Like Yo said, it’s a perception matter. Am I being clear?
And the difference between Payless and any luxury brand? Everything! And please don’t ask me to define everything :smiley:

Rodrigo, you missed the point. There is no such thing overpriced, or underpriced, there is only price. And what the consumer will spend is entirely determined by the consumer. A $50 watch keeps the same time as a $5000 watch and can look exactly the same. Yet the $50 is considered a fake, ripoff.

So what Pallesi sold is what Pallesi sold. No one was coerced. The only thing exposed was vanity.

Hasan Minhaj did a pretty good piece on the economy of hype a few weeks back

Nice complementary Yo! Entertaining and scary about the whole Carlyle group and their investments, not cool at all.

Well I do agree consumer pay just price, in my first comment I came to vanity also so I guess we’re arriving to the same end. “Tell me what do you want and I’ll tell you the price”

doesn’t it depend if the $50 watch is a fake ripoff of the $5000 one? the price doesn’t automatically make something low quality or a fake/ripoff, i guess from a purely functional perspective a watch is a watch but build quality, engineering, materials, etc. change the expectation of the price and whether it will last months or decades. it could be that vanity was exposed in this case, but given the presentation/setup i’d say the expectation definitely was, which is somewhat of coercion, or at the very least obfuscation…

this stunt is kinda funny but i’m conflicted about the utility of it, i suppose it exposes something most are aware of…but there is a difference between the quality (in design, development, & marketing included in that) of what payless produces from their higher end counterparts; how big that gap is, whether it is discernible, or if it ultimately matters to the end consumer of payless is the question that matters, i think…the ‘influencer’ willing to paying hundreds of $$$ doesn’t seem to really overlap with the consumer for payless; that brand perception & presentation matters can’t be much of a revelation, which is why they put on this charade in the 1st place…

…if they want those types of consumers maybe they should actually look at changing the context & experience(s) around their product?

…if they want those types of consumers maybe they should actually look at changing the context & experience(s) around their product?

But they don’t want that! They only want to send the message that they COULD do that if they CHOSE to - this is a jab at high end brands stating exactely that: the context and experience around a product makes something high end, not the actual product.

but given the presentation/setup i’d say the expectation definitely was, which is somewhat of coercion, or at the very least obfuscation…

Wait… so when Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Hermes has the proper setup/presentation it’s legit but when “Pallesi” does it it’s coercion and obfuscation?

i guess from a purely functional perspective a watch is a watch but build quality, engineering, materials, etc. change the expectation of the price and whether it will last months or decades.

Many designers, engineers and other “product people” like to think that, but the cold and hard capitalist truth is that in many cases the quality of the engineering/design/materials plays a subordinate role and is mostly a supporting character to underline a certain brand image. ESPECIALLY in fashion.

The 2 points I took away from it are:

  1. to consumers, pay attention! What you think you are getting is not always what you are in fact getting
  2. to designers (or product dev people of all stripes), your end user might not value the things you value (and maybe that is ok, but be aware of it)

On the quality question, is a $600 pair of shoes better quality that a $60 pair of shoes? Most very likely yes the materials, the construction techniques, the fit are probably improved… the question is are they 10 X better? Because you are paying 10 X the price. Now lets take into account that Payless is essentially a wholesaler, selling their own brand in their own simple retail locations, they don’t have to pay 50 points of margin to Nordstrom or whatever boutique. So lets cut the price differential in half, are the $600 shoes 5X better? Maybe 3X better and the other portion goes to the brand?

It is an even more investing question in today’s world of contract manufacturing. One of the better footwear factory groups in China is the Stella group. They use great materials, some of their lines are trained by Italian shoe makers, they know what they are doing and they work with some of the best brands. If Payless asked them to manufacture a line of shoes, I’m sure they would do it. I think even with Payless’s margins the prices would be a bit higher, but you can pop over to Aldo and see they have a more expensive line ($100-$150) and I would’d be surprised if you told me those were built in a Stella owned factory. Maybe not the same one that makes the super high end stuff, but probably a team in training to do that work. The same can be said about CE manufacturing. You want to build something at Foxcon or Flextronics, they will do that for you.

So, like Ade said the differences come down to how much the company is going to spend on the BOM, the ID, the UX, and the Brand X. Payless isn’t going to spend on those things, but as a consumer, if you don’t care about that, there are options.

All good conversations. Glad this provoked some chatter.

As far as its utility as a marketing stunt, I’ve seen it being passed around the web and I’m guessing their only metrics for success here are views, shares, and probably brand awareness pre and post.

Payless shows that in this world it is possible to create high-end luxury for low-end prices.
The price and setting only already determine it to be high-end - that is a message for us designers to make sure the customer obtains deeper value, because the purchasing process is only ephemeral.
Also it creates a world where everybody can become an influencer since it’s only about the perception.

i think i get what you are stating…sure there is some artificialness to some of the context and experience around some products but there are pertinent distinctions that differentiate pricepoints even in fashion (tho as yo pointed out, the actual size of the difference in relation to the price/value can be very much up for debate)…and as this was a farce in which the intention was to deceive, i think that is definitionally obfuscation…they could have maybe arrived at a similar conclusion without this circumstance…whatever anyone thinks about the quality of such brands like hermes & the like, to my albeit limited understanding, they aren’t faking their thing or fooling their consumers inauthentically…

and while it may be ‘that in many cases the quality of the engineering/design/materials plays a subordinate role and is mostly a supporting character to underline a certain brand image’ that doesn’t invalidate that some companies spend more on those things than others (often resulting in a higher cost product) nor does it necessarily mean that those things are just to play up on said brand image


not sure if that is what payless shows with this, they did manage to fool some people in a controlled environment tho…again to yo’s takeaway of understanding what actually matters to the end consumer rather than injecting our own ideas of value into product; the ephemerality/lasting of the product is ultimately somewhat out of our control. it already was the case that anyone could be an ‘influencer,’ only now individuals have more capacity to reach/be seen by others