The Hipster Buying Power

The term "Hipster", in the 1940s, referred to aficionados of jazz, in particular modern jazz , which became popular in the early '40s. The hipster adopted the lifestyle of the jazz musician, including some or all of the following: manner of dress, slang terminology, relaxed attitude, sarcastic humor, self-imposed poverty, and relaxed sexual codes. Early hipsters were generally white youths adopting many of the ways of urban blacks of the time, but later hipsters often copied the early ones without knowing the origins of the culture. Today term "Hipster" refer to aficionados of the "80's era". Collectively, you can call them The Hipsters. Retailers, on the other hand, might want to call them walking dollar bills. I read a recent article in Forbes Magazine about how the Hipster surge is affecting the retail market. One example they site is how Abercrombie has struggled to increase sales over the past year, while "hipster-centric" Outfitters continue to see increase in sale. Here is a little excerpt from the article;

"But hipsters have something else that makes them attractive to marketers: greater numbers. Luxury marketing consultant Pam Danzinger says that Millennials in general--and hipsters especially--will be one of the next big consumer demographic targets.

As children of Baby Boomers, the number of people--with money to burn--born as Millennials is 70 million and growing. That's much larger than Generation X, which includes about 46 million Americans. Gen Xers' spending power--which amounts to about $125 billion annually--can't compare with that of the Boomers, who boast an estimated buying power of $2 trillion a year with a population of 79 million, according to Mind Comet, an Orlando-based market research and consulting firm.

Millennials spend the money of their parents, the Boomers."

Read the whole article here