Steven Feinstein has a problem: His dresses are too stylish.
As the president of ECI, a division of New York-based ICE Apparel, Feinstein has come to terms with the dichotomy between his misses’ sportswear line and his dress collection, and has developed a solution: a Web site that sells ECI dresses featured in editorial content.
Although ECI’s sportswear component makes up more than two-thirds of the six-year-old brand’s $75 million in wholesale volume, its dresses make the news. Feinstein has a book full of recent press: Elle just featured an ECI dress, and Vogue will feature one for the first time in September. In spring 2005, ECI received more than 160 calls about one dress that In Style chose.
“The problem is we are portrayed as much younger and hipper than we actually are,” Feinstein said. “Our customer distribution is so different than our image. If Elle picks a garment and we don’t end up selling it, they can’t run it. “
ECI plans a soft launch for its Web site this month at ecinewyork.com, with apparel and press images, and in January the company will start selling online the dresses that are featured in the press, as well as other selected styles. The company will bypass the retail rule by accepting orders from editorials if ECI cannot direct customers to stores. Feinstein predicts the Web site each month could feature up to five or six such dresses, or even sportswear items.
ECI dresses sell in the same department stores, including Macy’s and Dillard’s, as ECI sportswear. But although those stores attract the sportswear target demographic perfectly, they at times don’t fit well with the young women seeing the dresses in the magazines.
“Where we might reach out to a younger customer with these dresses, we don’t get them in our stores,” Feinstein said. “Girls see our dresses in magazines and want to wear the merchandise, but would never buy from the stores where we sell it.”
The stores where those women do shop — Neiman Marcus, Barneys New York and Saks Fifth Avenue — don’t match with the less-than-$200 price tags on the ECI dresses. “Being a value price point is a great thing, but it also holds you back from being in some stores and reaching some customers,” Feinstein said.
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Perhaps the easier — and more profitable — solution is to simply raise the dress prices. This hasn’t escaped Feinstein.
He plans to create a new dress line, with a higher price point and a slimmer, non-misses’ fit, for spring 2008. He hopes to sell those lines in stores such as Neiman’s and Saks, in addition to his own stores, the first three of which he plans to open in New York in early 2008. Within five years, his goal is to open more than 30 additional stores across the country.
“To me a store is the best way of branding a line,” he said. “In department stores, even if you hire your own people, it is very, very difficult to control the way your own merchandise is shown if you are not a very large brand. Owning your own stores gives you better command of your destiny.”
Why the big disconnect between ECI’s sportswear and dresses in the first place? “Sportswear every month has to tell a story, and there’s only so much room for creativity,” he explained. “In dresses, it’s easier to have the liberty to create five pieces of art.”