Kidding! Kidding, kidding, kidding. Sure, I knew, or at least assumed that Mary-Kate and Ashley, the Olsen twins, shown here hawking their “Elizabeth and James” fashionware, were still alive, but not that they were, you know, still commercially viable. I mean, wasn’t their shelf-life roughly contemporaneous with the “if there’s grass on the infield, play ball!” jokes, and thus expiring at the same time?
Well, maybe not, but maybe so. Michael Bloomberg (okay, Bloomberg Business) is on the case, and tells us that fabled merchandiser Kohl’s, the largest department store chain in the country, suffered a painful holiday season, dragged down in particular by a “softness” in women’s apparel, despite a special hookup with M-K & A. I have never been in a Kohl’s (they certainly never established themselves in the DC market), but I sort of have a picture of moms who grew up on Full House (which I, of course, never watched, because I was already like a gazillion when it was on) exclaiming “Look! It’s Mary Kate and Ashley! I grew up with them!” while their Generation Z (or perhaps Z') daughters stare zombie-like at their cellphones, possibly muttering whatever is their generation’s equivalent of “whatever”. Anyway, whoever’s in charge of marketing at Kohl’s, take the advice of someone who’s twice as old as you: Get hip!
