WILL FYE FLY?

After years of research and months of speculation, Trans World, the braintrust that gave you TWEC.com, has finally unveiled the much-anticipated new brand name for all of its 730 mall-based stores.

Trans World CEO/President Robert Higgins told a gathering of some 250 industry heavyweights at Rockefeller Center today that the fye brand will start being rolled out immediately, with expectations for completion of the task by the end of the year. All Camelot, The Wall, Disc Jockey and Record Town stores will be changing their monikers.

TW's 250 freestanding stores, including Coconuts, Strawberries and Specs will continue to operate under their existing brands. There are currently some 15 fye stores already in operation. The rather ill-named TWEC.com ("The World's Entertainment Center") will also change to fye.com in August.

Higgins promised that all locations would be upgraded during the changeover. There will be web-based kiosks for downloading catalog titles along with new listening and viewing stations that will use the bar code to activate streaming audio and video clips. New customer incentive programs will be used to track customer behavior and preferences.

Higgins remarked that the reason the new brand name would not be used for all of TW's locations was that the mall and free-standing stores attracted two different kinds of customers. Freestanding stores are "destination" locations that attract a much higher rate of sales-per-customer than the more passive, mall-based consumer outlets. In addition, the freestanding brands of Camelot, Strawberries and Specs have regional strongholds that TW is loath to discard.

fye is the result of 18 months of consumer research that Higgins stated, "connects with consumers of the next century. I'm just not sure how it'll hit the ones from this century."

Well, it is a damn site better than TWEC. And fye on anyone who says different.