LOS ANGELES — C&C California, the barely three-year-old T-shirt company, is thinking big and bigger.
Its first shop-in-shop bowed last Friday at Bloomingdale’s Manhattan flagship, the second is to launch today at the retailer’s SoHo store and four more are set to open next week in Southern California Bloomingdale’s doors: Century City, Beverly Center, Sherman Oaks and Newport Beach.
The Los Feliz, Calif.-based company, whose brightly colored, layerable T-shirts got a huge boost when Oprah Winfrey featured them on her show in C&C’s first year, was acquired by Liz Claiborne Inc. in January.
“We were this little groovy sailboat and now we’re this tanker,” said Claire Stansfield, who cofounded the brand with Cheyann Benedict.
The venture is part of a growth strategy for a company that generated net sales of $21 million in the 2004 fiscal year, according to Liz Claiborne. People familiar with the company expect it to do about $28 million this year.
C&C California has started to add bottoms and dresses to the line, and this fall unveiled cashmere T-shirts as well as lightweight corduroy trousers. It hopes the same recipe of easy, layerable styles that worked for the T-shirts will prove as delectable to customers as they adapt it to other pieces.
“We want to establish it as a lifestyle brand,” Stansfield said. “And we thought, ‘Why don’t we start making some of the products that people normally wear with our [T-shirts]?'”
The target base is women 18 to 45 as well as Baby Boomers, and the products are sold at specialty stores such as Scoop and Ron Herman as well as department stores, including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s West.
Bloomingdale’s and Liz Claiborne would not reveal sales projections for the shop-in-shops, which range from 200 to 400 square feet.
Jeanne Sottile, vice president of contemporary for Bloomingdale’s, said the line has been the retailer’s most successful T-shirt launch since being introduced 18 months ago.
“The customers got it quickly and loved pairing a T-shirt and tank top together,” Sottile said.
Sottile said she knew she was on to something big. “I sat down with Claire and Cheyann and said, ‘How do we make it look important in the stores, so you can own your own real estate and be dominant?'”
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Stansfield said the company is ready to aim for domination in the category. Opening a stand-alone shop is high on the wish list, particularly after watching the success of some competitors, she said.
“Every time we drive past an American Apparel shop we want to shoot ourselves,” said Stansfield, referring to the vertically integrated Los Angeles-based apparel company that morphed its wholesale business for fitted, imprintable Ts into a multiproduct wholesale and global retail operation.
Susan Davidson, group president for Liz Claiborne Inc., said of the C&C-Bloomingdale’s relationship: “The intention is to have more next year … but we’re waiting to measure the success of this business. Bloomingdale’s thinks we can grow this to be a tremendous business.”