With both a new management and design team, outdoor apparel brand Gramicci has equipped itself to watch its sales climb.
Its spring 2007 collection, which marks the Westlake Village, Calif.-based company’s 25th anniversary, is enjoying a sales increase of 45 percent, compared with spring 2006. More impressively, the average specialty store order is up 450 percent, the average major store order is up more than 1,000 percent, and the line is doubling its number of doors to about 300, according to Marty Weening, president of Gramicci.
Weening celebrated his one-year anniversary at the firm this week. Before joining Gramicci, he owned a brand management company that was hired to assess the outdoors line about two years ago. Gramicci’s new owner, Calabasas, Calif.-based turnaround investor Buxbaum Group, was so impressed with Weening’s plan to return the brand to its original luster that they hired him to lead the team.
At the company’s peak in the mid- to late Nineties, Gramicci was doing about $20 million in sales annually, Weening said, adding that he thinks it will reach that point again by 2008.
According to Weening, the brand “stubbed its toe four years ago.” It was underfinanced and was inconsistent in its quality and shipping, which was only on time a bit more than 50 percent.
Weening’s first priority as president was to reestablish the brand with the retail base and show them Gramicci could ship on time.
He then hired a new management, merchandising and design team. The design team is led by Sarah Mark, who had been the head designer at Sanctuary.
The result is a product that appeals not only to the original Gramicci customer, an outdoorsy Baby Boomer who is now in her 40s or 50s, but also to the next generation of climbers, who are in their 20s and 30s.
“We are very attentive to make sure that the heritage product that has built the brand — best symbolized by the original climbing pant — is alive and well,” Weening said. “We haven’t abandoned that core customer, but now we are also serving a younger, hipper customer. We’ve brought in the segment that is the next generation of where the consumer lifestyle is heading.”
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Most products wholesale between $14 and $26.50. Gramicci is sold at stores including Paragon, REI and Whole Earth Provision Co. in Austin, Tex., which more than doubled its spring 2007 order, according to Laura Kinman, sportswear buyer for Whole Earth. Kinman said the past problems with late shipping are no longer an issue.
“They definitely kept some of their original patterns and that is what sells the best for us, because we haven’t had it for a while and we still have a die-hard customer,” she said. “But what I liked the best were the more contemporary styles that speak to a customer who is younger who they might not have gotten in the past.”
The majority of the line has performance technology, but 30 percent is now designed specifically for lifestyle apparel dressing. Much color appears in the proprietary fabrics, and the line includes sundresses made of an Indonesian sarong print that probably won’t be seeing too many harnesses.
“Unless you are going out and climbing Mount Everest, there is a growing segment of the population that says, ‘Why can’t I get both?’” Weening said. “What used to be an all technically-driven, performance-oriented consumer base also wants cross-functionality. Most of our product is built both for the sport and for the sport of living.”