December 17, 2007
Asda to Relieve Women’s Burden with Stronger Bags
By Bernice Hurst, Managing Director, Fine Food Network
It isn’t all about plastic bags. Those trendsetting, trendspotting folks at
Asda, Wal-Mart’s outpost in the U.K., have announced that life is officially
a burden for women. Apparently “new research has revealed that the average
weight of the contents of a woman’s handbag has soared over the past five years” by
what they describe as a “whopping 38 percent increase” from a mere 1.72 kilos
to 2.37 kilos.
Asda’s research consisted of stopping fifty women at random
to weigh their bags and examine the contents. Announcing that the cause can
be attributed to women’s struggle to cope with demands at work and home, they
claimed the biggest weight gain is due to the increasing role played by women
at all levels in today’s corporate world. However the research also admitted “despite
changing lifestyle, the greatest percentage of weight is still taken up by
old handbag favorites.”
Brand director, Fiona Lambert, proclaimed that women’s complaints about modern life becoming a burden have turned out to be justified. “They carry the equivalent of five bags of sugar with them, everywhere they go. The contents of a woman’s handbag are a good indicator for their entire lifestyle. Increasing weight must mean increasing responsibilities,” she
said.
In order to stay ahead of the game, the supermarket has asked manufacturers
to increase the tensile strength of weight-bearing straps and stitching of
future handbags to accommodate the expectation that contents will weigh in
at more than 3 kilos within the next ten years.
While it is hard to dispute
that many of us carry quite a few of life’s necessities around with us, Asda
seems to have focused on bag ladies only. One could ask, what about the boys?
Joey Tribbiani from the U.S. television sitcom, Friends,
may have been amongst the first to carry a man-bag but they’re all over the
place now as there’s so much stuff that guys feel are essential and can’t stuff
into their pockets. Perhaps we’re all becoming beasts of burden.
Discussion Questions: Have we all become beasts of burden carrying all types of stuff around? Is there a business opportunity in this for retailers?
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We all need to carry with us is a driver’s license and a Mastercard. at minimum. Keys and a cell phone probably come next. Generally there is a maximum weight we are going to tolerate.
So the business opportunities are replacing heavy items for light weight items. Laptops and a cell phone were replaced by a Blackberry. Remember when we had more than one key to our car? No longer. Remember having a credit card for every gas station and department store? Now most of us use one card. The business of keeping the weight down in a handbag is nothing new.
Personal electronics have gotten lighter. Compare a cassette Walkman to an iPod, for example. The worst offenders are still laptops. If you want a decent size screen and keyboard, your have to lug around a few pounds. Not everyone wants a Blackberry-size device. Laptop sales, already very healthy, will zoom to a new level when “full size” units weighing 8 ounces or less become widely available.
In the meantime, in urban areas with good public transportation, folks of both sexes carry backpacks. In the suburbs, a lot of people use their cars as their backpacks.
Wow, it would be great to have women comment on this subject.
I can see mothers, women who work in an office, go to the gym, take the dog to the groomers, pick up a few items from the grocery store…the list of things and size of the bag could be endless depending on their responsibilities.
As for me, I still carry a backpack like I did 25 years ago. Although, it’s much more chic and streamlined. My wallet, keys, cell phone, a lipstick, pen and small pad to write ideas on; well, that is about all I need or want to carry with me.
Though I never bought or wore/carried one, I once thought fanny packs and man purses were great ideas. Especially back when cell phones were gargantuan and you actually needed a separate PDA. Today I wear Levis nearly all the time and everything I need fits in my jeans pocket–or over my ear via Bluetooth. Cars start without keys! Nearly everything can be made to open with keypads. And Lasix means you have to carry only sunglasses–not regular glasses, too. If I ever become a makeup-wearing metrosexual, though, I may need an extra pocket. Perhaps women should consider having their own “nasty little pocketses.”
I live near San Francisco, and haven’t seen a man-bag (interesting term) in years and years. RMD (real men don’t). Most of the men I know even sneer at phones on belt clips and bulky, hip-pocket billfolds. There are many alternatives.
For anyone without a clue, women’s handbags are fashion accessories, virtually unnecessary if one puts her mind to it. Why else would the designer editions cost $thousands, counterfeits become ultra-lucrative, or a woman need more than one?
The goofy idea that keeps popping up here is that women have more mobile responsibilities than men. Totally sexist and untrue. Men never take the dog to school or the kids to the groomers (or something like that)? We never have to stop by the supermarket to pick up the cleaning or by the cleaners to pick up bread and milk? We do all that stuff and more without the aid of a purse or backpack. If it were true that women somehow have more of these types of responsibilities than men and therefore need a bag of some sort, every unspoken-for man would carry a purse.
The truth is that women love shoes and want bags to match. They dress for other women, and a matching bag is just an iteration of that competition.
50 bags? Truly scientific. If there has been an increase in the amount of stuff women, or maybe all of us, carry around, it is probably more a symptom of our always-connected lifestyle than true need. I don’t just mean electronics, I mean the “I have to be ready for anything” syndrome.
Personally, I pared down my wallet to a few essentials and put almost every other number-bearing thing I need into my cell phone/email/organizer device. It’s amazing what you don’t really need to carry.
Moms need to carry a lot more when the kids are little, but I think this trend is a burden not born of necessity.
We have simplified a lot of what we carry such as one or two credit cards, Our electronic gadgets weight less. The comparison was made between today and a few years ago. I have no data but if I remember the size of my mother’s purse–and that was some 50 years ago–it was a lot bigger and she had more bulk then most of the purses are today. Yes more stuff in some ways but less bulk and different today.
Women’s hand bags and men’s brief cases have both gotten heavier. Everyone is carrying electronics to stay connected or for entrainment purposes. On top of this most people carry 10 or more frequent shopper cards and a host of credit and debit cards.
The next evolution is for technology to reduce all these extras into one simple unit. For example, why can’t my cell phone transmit my frequent shopper number or my phone number at checkout?
We need some women to comment on this. Then, as a treat for the guys, there should be a comment from Larry the Cable Guy. Work on that, RetailWire, will you?
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We all need to carry with us is a driver’s license and a Mastercard. at minimum. Keys and a cell phone probably come next. Generally there is a maximum weight we are going to tolerate.
So the business opportunities are replacing heavy items for light weight items. Laptops and a cell phone were replaced by a Blackberry. Remember when we had more than one key to our car? No longer. Remember having a credit card for every gas station and department store? Now most of us use one card. The business of keeping the weight down in a handbag is nothing new.
Personal electronics have gotten lighter. Compare a cassette Walkman to an iPod, for example. The worst offenders are still laptops. If you want a decent size screen and keyboard, your have to lug around a few pounds. Not everyone wants a Blackberry-size device. Laptop sales, already very healthy, will zoom to a new level when “full size” units weighing 8 ounces or less become widely available.
In the meantime, in urban areas with good public transportation, folks of both sexes carry backpacks. In the suburbs, a lot of people use their cars as their backpacks.
Wow, it would be great to have women comment on this subject.
I can see mothers, women who work in an office, go to the gym, take the dog to the groomers, pick up a few items from the grocery store…the list of things and size of the bag could be endless depending on their responsibilities.
As for me, I still carry a backpack like I did 25 years ago. Although, it’s much more chic and streamlined. My wallet, keys, cell phone, a lipstick, pen and small pad to write ideas on; well, that is about all I need or want to carry with me.
Though I never bought or wore/carried one, I once thought fanny packs and man purses were great ideas. Especially back when cell phones were gargantuan and you actually needed a separate PDA. Today I wear Levis nearly all the time and everything I need fits in my jeans pocket–or over my ear via Bluetooth. Cars start without keys! Nearly everything can be made to open with keypads. And Lasix means you have to carry only sunglasses–not regular glasses, too. If I ever become a makeup-wearing metrosexual, though, I may need an extra pocket. Perhaps women should consider having their own “nasty little pocketses.”
I live near San Francisco, and haven’t seen a man-bag (interesting term) in years and years. RMD (real men don’t). Most of the men I know even sneer at phones on belt clips and bulky, hip-pocket billfolds. There are many alternatives.
For anyone without a clue, women’s handbags are fashion accessories, virtually unnecessary if one puts her mind to it. Why else would the designer editions cost $thousands, counterfeits become ultra-lucrative, or a woman need more than one?
The goofy idea that keeps popping up here is that women have more mobile responsibilities than men. Totally sexist and untrue. Men never take the dog to school or the kids to the groomers (or something like that)? We never have to stop by the supermarket to pick up the cleaning or by the cleaners to pick up bread and milk? We do all that stuff and more without the aid of a purse or backpack. If it were true that women somehow have more of these types of responsibilities than men and therefore need a bag of some sort, every unspoken-for man would carry a purse.
The truth is that women love shoes and want bags to match. They dress for other women, and a matching bag is just an iteration of that competition.
50 bags? Truly scientific. If there has been an increase in the amount of stuff women, or maybe all of us, carry around, it is probably more a symptom of our always-connected lifestyle than true need. I don’t just mean electronics, I mean the “I have to be ready for anything” syndrome.
Personally, I pared down my wallet to a few essentials and put almost every other number-bearing thing I need into my cell phone/email/organizer device. It’s amazing what you don’t really need to carry.
Moms need to carry a lot more when the kids are little, but I think this trend is a burden not born of necessity.
We have simplified a lot of what we carry such as one or two credit cards, Our electronic gadgets weight less. The comparison was made between today and a few years ago. I have no data but if I remember the size of my mother’s purse–and that was some 50 years ago–it was a lot bigger and she had more bulk then most of the purses are today. Yes more stuff in some ways but less bulk and different today.
Women’s hand bags and men’s brief cases have both gotten heavier. Everyone is carrying electronics to stay connected or for entrainment purposes. On top of this most people carry 10 or more frequent shopper cards and a host of credit and debit cards.
The next evolution is for technology to reduce all these extras into one simple unit. For example, why can’t my cell phone transmit my frequent shopper number or my phone number at checkout?
We need some women to comment on this. Then, as a treat for the guys, there should be a comment from Larry the Cable Guy. Work on that, RetailWire, will you?