Know your customer and make sure your customer knows about you are the principal tenets of retail business.
They apply to the small business as well as the $1 billion Arizona Jean Company, a branch of J.C. Penney Co.

And Jeffrey Bergus said Arizona Jean Company forgot all about those tenets before he became corporate product development director in 2001.

Upon his arrival, he immediately saw how out of touch the clothier for the youth crowd was. The average customer's age was 44.

Bergus quickly scrapped 20 percent of the product line.

"We had to edit product that didn't fit," he said last week at the Global Retailing Conference at The Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa. "That made me a real popular guy."

So did showing up to senior management meetings in jeans and T-shirt. Jeans and white button-up shirt (sleeves rolled up, collar open) were his wardrobe for the conference, put on by the University of Arizona's Southwest Retail Center.

"Buyers and division heads thought they knew what the brand should be," Bergus said. "I am the brand."

And the brand Bergus created is one specifically based on what the 17-to-24-year-old group and younger children want.

Bergus went to the customer. Armed with a video camera, he visited a mother with several young children and got right into the mix, right down to getting a "kick me" paper stuck on his back and being summarily kicked.

"Getting to know your consumer and understand their lifestyle," he told the 100 retail managers from around the country.

He also interviewed teens and had Arizona Jean designers come up with clothes that fit the youths' desires.

Then he dreamed up a television advertising campaign based on fully outlined teenage characters and shot the ads in the wilds of Colorado and New Mexico.

The results: Profits are up, and revenue is nearly the same as before he arrived and tossed out one-fifth of the product line. Bergus believes Arizona Jean sales can reach $2 billion "hopefully pretty soon."

Arizona Jean Company has not determined the average age of its revamped target line, but Bergus believes outright that the customer age matches the targeted age.

"It's blowing off the shelves," he said. "We know it's selling. Nobody's going to buy it except 17- to 24-year-olds."

Also, teens are shopping at JCPenney.

Bergus knew teens largely favor specialty mall stores such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Tommy Hilfiger and scoff at department stores - even though trendy clothes can be found there.

"I give (teens) $150 and let them shop at (JCPenney), and then I talk to them," Bergus said. "They come out and say, 'Ooh, I didn't know you had ... ' Once they're in the door, we got them."