Contemporary designers search for ways to stand out in a crowded market.
In a steadily growing economy, contemporary vendors are running with their strengths.
Despite a weak fourth quarter, the U.S. Federal Reserve reported that the economy grew 3.5 percent in 2005 and personal spending increased 1.9 percent overall.
This steady but cautious growth has led to steady but cautious buying, with an ever-increasing emphasis on immediates. Manufacturers are relying on the strength of established customer bases and design concepts, freshening up with novelty fabrics and new products rather than branching out with larger business ventures.
Sales at Allen Allen in 2005 ran even with numbers from the year before, according to national sales manager Kari Carpino. But sales in the first few months of this year have jumped 50 percent over the same period last year.
Carpino attributes this success to the line’s stability within the contemporary category. Five years ago, when the category began polarizing toward more misses’-inspired looks on one end and younger contemporary looks on the other, Allen Allen made a conscious decision to stay put. “There’s this lady who stayed with us, and she doesn’t fit in [the new definition of] contemporary styles,” Carpino said.
In fact, steadiness through times of change has been Allen Allen’s business model since its inception in 1986. Once available exclusively through retail kiosks and catalogues, the line began wholesaling in 1992 and soon closed its catalogue division, supplementing wholesale business with warehouse sales six times a year and telephone orders through the store in Newport Beach, Calif.
“We probably did lose a little [of the customer base with the move],” Carpino said, “but she always finds us.”
With the wholesale division now firmly established and selling to stores including Nordstrom, Boston Proper and Fred Segal, Allen Allen is returning to its direct-sales roots with a catalogue and a Web site soon to launch at allenallen.net. Carpino hopes this move will appeal to Allen Allen’s traditional catalogue customer, and hopefully will attract new customers, as well. “I think there will be a lot of expansion because of that,” she said.
In the face of a constant demand for novelty and item-driven pieces, the Allen Allen customer can depend on a steady design concept. “We never change too much because we’ve had the same customer for 12 years,” Carpino said. “We just give them something new and fresh. We do what we do, and then we put a twist on what we do.” This means offering its usual “clean, soccer-mom” lounge and lifestyle apparel with new and different touches of camouflage print and tie-dye in French terry, burnout microjersey and Modal pointelle that the customer hasn’t seen before.
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That devotion to basics has helped Allen Allen meet an ever-growing demand for immediates. “That’s been a strategy from the beginning,” Carpino said. “We stock a lot of our basic product” to guarantee a four- to eight-week turnover. Wholesale volume for 2006 is projected at $20 million.
Marisa K. hopes to reach out to new customers by focusing on new products. After just over a year, the line is expanding from its original Modal tops with jewelry accents and “shimmies” to add dresses for spring and pants for fall, as well as a new tech fabric appropriately called Slinky.
“We’re trying to get a little bit of everything in there, make it a complete collection,” said marketing director Olivia Perliman, who attributed growing sales figures to increased wholesale traffic and the larger size of the line itself.
Perliman said that the line’s biggest challenges are the basic growing pains of every new line. Efforts have been made to simplify shipping and communication, and “things are finally running a lot smoother,” she said. She’s now able to concentrate on the other major challenge for a new line: gaining name recognition in a crowded market.
“We’ve been trying to get more publicity for our line, get our name out there,” Perliman said. The first step was getting a booth backstage at the American Music Awards, and the second will be getting their booth in the Pedestal area at WWDMAGIC. The next step will possibly involve a public relations firm, she said.
“Good p.r. is going to be the focus going into the second year,” she said.
Mitchell Quaranta can sympathize with Perliman’s growing pains. As president of Kut From the Kloth, the brand-new sister line to young contemporary See Thru Soul, he understands the challenges of branding and differentiating a new line.
“The contemporary denim market is flooded, and people are resistant to new brands,” he said.
Quaranta’s strategy is to concentrate on Kut From the Kloth washable Tencel tops, bottoms, jackets and dresses to emphasize a lifestyle line with a denim component, rather than the other way around. “I think the other products in our line will help us break into the market, and that will help us launch denim,” he said.
The close association with a more established line gives Kut From the Kloth an advantage in avoiding many problems common to start-up companies. “We’re a well-established, big company with a really good reputation in terms of shipping, infrastructure, styling, fit,” Quaranta said. “We have a great design team, and I think that’s one of our greatest strengths.”
Quaranta sees the rising trend for immediates as an issue he’ll have to address from the beginning. Although the line just celebrated its official launch at Coterie, held in New York Feb. 14-16, he already is preparing to meet demand closer to season.
“We’re always looking for avenues to shorten our lead time, but you have to balance between product to book future seasons and inventory to supply immediates,” he said. “Part of our culture and our success over 29 years has been that philosophy, to take the risk out of the retailer’s hands and make it easy to buy from us.”
Kut From the Cloth, which will be showing at WWDMAGIC in the Pedestal area, expects wholesale volume for the remainder of this year to reach $10 million.
A less item-driven contemporary market is paying off for Saffron Rare Threads. “More collection-based concepts are gaining a bit more recognition, which is usually good for us,” said managing partner Priya Saraswati.
The two-year-old line tripled its 2004 sales last year, partly due to expansion in the line. Spring 2006 saw a new group of jersey V-neck dresses, which draw on the popularity of the line’s already successful tops, as well as a new group of trenchcoats drawing on the line’s popular jackets. Both groups will carry on into fall.
Also helping the bottom line is the company’s growing reputation. “It’s hard to get in front of the buyers” with a new line, Saraswati said. “Marketing the first collection was challenging. Now that we’re on our fifth collection, we’ve got a track record for fit and a good product, and it’s easier to get in front of people.” She sees WWDMAGIC and the Pedestal area as a great opportunity to attract “the right clientele.”
Local production resources have made business much easier for the line. “San Francisco isn’t as big a garment industry as L.A. or New York, but we have good resources nearby,” Saraswati said. The company’s offices are a block away from the factory, “which lets us have a lot of control over the manufacturing process.”
With retailers more cautious and buying closer to cycle, local production helps Saffron meet the demand for immediates. “When we see something that’s selling well, we can get it recut and resewn quickly,” Saraswati said. “When something’s doing well, it would be a shame not to exploit that.”