DALLAS — Pendleton Woolen Mills is attracting younger shoppers and building sales with a sharper fashion focus, while also playing up the heritage of the 142-year-old company based in Portland, Ore.
The $175 million brand, founded in 1863 by Thomas Kay, an English weaver who relocated to the Oregon Territory, has long drawn consumers with its better-priced classic woolen sportswear, knits, and expansive gallery of tartan plaids and Native American prints that reached iconic status in the counterculture Sixties and are having a retail resurgence.
Baby Boomers have been and remain a staple of Pendleton’s women’s division. The unit generates at least 50 percent of total company business, which also includes men’s, home and textile collections.
But lately, younger women, especially those in their 20s and 30s, have been checking out Pendleton at retail, purchasing fashion items for work and weekend. Noticing the trend, Pendleton executives decided to ramp up the fashion quotient starting with the spring 2005 collection and make a concerted outreach to younger shoppers.
“Last year, we noticed more younger women purchasing Pendleton and realized there was an opportunity to extend our customer base and attract a new demographic of shoppers,” said Pat Fowler, women’s wear division manager. “These younger women want modern classics with fresher styling, including contoured waistlines with no elastic, more stretch, both long and short skirts, three-quarter- sleeve jackets, fashion tops and knits, luxe fabrics such as leather and suede, and lots of color, which for fall includes pumpkin, chartreuse, fern green, persimmon and gray.”
Fowler said Pendleton’s mills have developed a new stretch fabric that is being incorporated into the collections to give more shape and contour.
“We’re taking a fresh and updated approach with classic Pendleton styles, such as exploding our signature plaids on 22-inch skirts shown in fashion colors,” she said. “It’s a new approach to modern classics to reach more women, and it’s paying off with double-digit sales increases both at wholesale and at retail, in our catalogues and on our newly designed Web site that reflects the more youthful changes, at pendleton-usa.com.”
Pendleton sells to about 400 better specialty and department stores such as Dillard’s in Little Rock, Ark., and Von Maur in Des Moines, Iowa, and also has 70 company-owned stores.
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For fall, wholesale prices are $26 for a Lycra spandex knit top to $208 for a lined jacket. Styles include a red suede jacket over a long Navajo-print wool skirt, a slim gray pantsuit with embroidered sleeves and purple paisley scarf, pink embroidered shirt and matching jacket over indigo denim jeans, and lots of plaids and leathers.
“The new fashion approach is designed to appeal to both our established customer base and also those new to the Pendleton brand by addressing different lifestyle needs, from dressy to relaxed,” Fowler said. “We’re going for a balance to meet the needs of the next generation of Pendleton shoppers.”