Beware All Retailers: Today's Youthful Customers Are Cybrids

There they are — the millennials — shopping in the stores of their choice and texting to their friends what's hot and what's not. The retailer has almost no sway in their merchandise preferences — much less color preferences. Trends in fashion are hard to define for them — they're more likely to be anti-trends. They were first called Generation Z, but that didn't fit their DNA. Now they're called "Cybrids." In a recent discussion with Erica Orange, vice president with consulting firm Weiner, Edrich, and Brown, she described the current youth as cyber hybrids, or Cybrids for short.