Soho Compagnie, a New York-based better casual sportswear company, is on the move.
The $10 million, family-owned wholesale business is expanding with more fashion, new
categories, a growing private label business, broader distribution and a new design and sourcing facility in India.
Soho Compagnie is striving to be a leading player in the crowded better casual category that includes resources such as Joseph A., ECI and Sunny Leigh.
The company’s strategy is to boost sales this year by at least 40 percent. It has more than 100
better specialty and department store accounts across the U.S. and in Canada, including Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Parisian.
“Expansion is the name of the game,” said Amit Datwani, who is co-vice president with his
brother, Raj. Their father, Eddie, is president. “Soho Compagnie continues to see growth in a tough retail climate by consistently trying to create and deliver a product that is considered unique or a destination buy.”
Amit Datwani makes bimonthly trips to the company’s new 2,000-square-foot buying, sourcing and design office in New Delhi, which opened in May. He monitors production at contract plants throughout India and China and travels to Europe with Soho Compagnie’s design team to source textiles and take the fashion pulse in European capitals for design inspiration.
Soho Compagnie launched in 2002 as a fashion top brand and has diversified offerings to include fashion tops and bottoms in sizes 2 to 16, along with petites, plus sizes and maternity wear. The firm plans to expand its New York headquarters from the existing space at 1407 Broadway to bigger offices in the Garment District by year’s end.
“The focus is multicategory growth with the debut of our knit top line for spring 2007,” Amit Datwani said. “Private label is also a growing business and will generate about 60 percent of sales in 2006 with a range of notable fashion catalogue houses. Fashion, fit, innovation, speed to market and constant product development are the keys to our future success and will be the driving factors for our growth going forward. We’re building up our U.S. business and laying the foundation for 2007 and beyond.”
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The company’s 60-piece knit top line that will launch for spring includes fashion and novelty tops that wholesale for $10 to $26. It features lace, crochet and hand-embellished beaded tops in neutral tones in silhouettes such as three-quarter-sleeve V-necks, tanks and T-shirts, as well as cowl- and scoop-neck tops in textured fabrics.
“We started the branded knits line because so many buyers were asking for them, and we had been doing knits in our private label division that were continual bestsellers,” said Datwani.
Soho Compagnie’s fall collection hit stores in late July and will continue to roll out through October. Early bestsellers include long blouses at $24.50 wholesale, with tonal embellishment and embroidery merchandised with vests with passementerie trim in chocolate, black and grape that wholesale for $14 to $26.
Woven styles have been part of Soho Compagnie’s lineup since its inception and continue to evolve. For fall, there’s a 120-piece cotton and spandex group that consists of novelty tops, vests, short jackets and a range of skirts. Colors include rich earth tones and neutrals accented with navy and various shades of red, green and yellow. Wholesale prices on the woven line range from $12 for a vest to $40 for a jacket.