AFFLUENZA
Evolving avatars
BY HINDOL SENGUPTA
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Beyond the metrosexual is the salessexual, the man who loves sales and value.
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A Salessexual goes to a sale not merely to get cut-price bargains. He goes to a sale to find what people need and no longer need and understand why they don’t need it anymore.
He is not merely looking for value for money. He is looking for ideas of value.
Changing with the times: In search of the essence of value...
Recently a designer friend of mine said she was turning into a Recessionista. That’s nice, said I, for, I had already become a Salessexual (please note, in case all of you forget or steal it, I have now officially invented a word).
The Salessexual is the latest in the evolving avatar — one of which is the metrosexual — of the modern man who, parodied in gazillion ads, balances nappy-change and networking effortlessly (and even “twitter-s” about it every hour).
The Salessexual man isn’t poor. But he knows that being sensible about money is the new being rich. Just, for instance, the way empathising Erin Burnett is now cooler than follow-the-money Maria Bartiromo.
The Salessexual man, therefore, loves sales. But mind you, not any type/kind of sale. He loves the kind of sale where you actually find bargains. Not the inflate by 50 per cent, then announce sale of 30 per cent kind of places.
The Salessexual man has perfected that most feminine (and venture capitalist) of arts — bargain hunting.
So why is Salessexual a move on, or an evolution, from the metrosexual man?
Because I believe metrosexual as we were in the last decade, men were still splurgers rather than bargainers. Also, while we would bargain furiously for the big things — a company, a yacht — we would always miss the point in smaller, less blingy things.
The main point of a bargain is not the price. It is the experience. And, as I wrote in my last column, price is no longer the point. Experience is everything.
The Salessexual man has evolved from showing off his yacht, his yachting trousers and his Gucci loafers. What is the Salessexual man looking for? He is not merely looking for value for money. He is looking for ideas of value. Things that broaden the idea the luxury to the Truly Special from the Merely Expensive.
In fact, the Salessexual man is beginning to demand, and often find, ideas that service his specific needs for a value for money price rather than the pay for flash value.
The Salessexual man for instance is dedicated to the idea of service.
When he travels, which he does often (always low-cost over less than 500 km), he seeks not just a luxury hotel. He seeks hubs of service. He seeks not a Jacuzzi, nor Blue Label in the mini bar, what he really seeks is intelligent service. People who will be able to find him the simplest maps around a new city, the most convenient tube rail route in a city which is clobbered with deadly traffic.
He is a man convinced of the import of tiny gestures. A devotee, as opposed to a god, as it were, of the small of things.
A Salessexual goes to a sale not merely to get cut-price bargains. He goes to a sale to find what people need and no longer need and understand why they don’t need it anymore. The Salessexual is a studier, an insight-former, a researcher of consumer behaviour. Oh! Actually that description would sound way too pompous for the Salessexual. What the Salessexual would say is he merely wants to find out why people do buy what they buy and what they are willing to buy if the price is right. He just wants to find out what really is the idea of value.
The Salessexual is not driven by the primitive instincts that drive many women to shop. This is true. I am not making this up. Researchers at the Manchester Metropolitan University have found that shoppers, especially women, seek to find solace in comforting malls and shops like they once sought to find solace in comforting caves (cavemen?).
Even as I was finishing this column, I went to speak at Delhi’s Pearl Academy of Fashion about dealing with the slowdown in the world of fashion. As I was driving there, some of my hopes of subcontinental fashion were being torn apart in the leafy boulevard of Lahore as gunmen shot at the Sri Lankan cricket team.
It seemed that the Salessexual man would never arise in Pakistan, a country full of friends, not enemies, for me. To show some solidarity for they who are scared, like me, for our thoughts, for hopeless hopefulness, our nightmarish stubbornness to dream, I pulled out, from my Chattisgarh printed bag a kaffieh (scarf) to drape around the neck. That was my way of saying as long as there is a subcontinent, there will the subcontinental Salessexual.
At the academy, I asked the students what is the one thing that is critical to be a successful Indian fashion designer? I argued vehemently that it is not marketing, not money, not anything else but — being Indian. How else, I argued, would you stand out if you are not true to your roots?
Even as I said that my phone beeped silently with frightened messages from Pakistan. Our shared roots, it seemed, were being hacked away. The Salessexual man exists on both sides of the border, I argued, ignoring the messages, men in Pakistan, so elegant in their salwar kameezes, do well to negotiate prices at Junaid Jamshed and figure out how to get the right value for money.
After I left the academy, I went to meet an old Pakistani friend who is from Peshawar but now lives in Delhi. I noticed his shoes. Calf leather par excellence, better, I thought, than anything I have ever seen at Gucci. He, I thought, was the subcontinental Salessexual.
Back before my computer, I got a Facebook message from the young, beautiful Noor Rahman, granddaughter of Pakistani fashion doyenne Faiza Samee. It said:
Event: Faiza Samee Design Studio Invites You
“O woman! Thou wert fashioned to beguile: So have all sages said, all poets sung”
The theme of that event, though as Indian I am unlikely to be able to make it, brought hopeful tears.
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