That’s the case for Emma Black, which is launching a jeanswear line for spring retailing, and a new line called The’ (the apostrophe is part of the name), which had a limited launch for fall and is rolling out for spring. Both lines have targeted distinct price niches — the entry level of the designer market for Emma Black and the niche between status and high-end for The’ — and set first-year sales targets of less than $5 million.
They’re also hoping to slip into vacancies in the boutique assortments that they expect will open up as prominent denim brands pursue wider distribution at larger chains.
The’ Jean Co. is the latest venture of Michael Press, an industry veteran with experience at Todd Oldham Jeans, Big Star and Diesel. The idea for the line came to him during a period he spent as a consultant after leaving Oldham in 1999.
“I would walk the trade shows and every brand that came out was a $100-plus jeans brand,” he said.
So, he decided to launch a line retailing for $74, a price point that’s been somewhat of a no-man’s-land between the status department store brands and high-end lines like Diesel and Earl.
Lucky Brand Dungarees is the one notable exception of a brand that has developed a strong business at that price point.
Press said it became clear to him in conversations with independent retailers that “they’d like to find a brand that gave them the quality they wanted, but allowed them to be a little more profitable than the high-end European jeans brands.”
To that end, the company is setting its wholesale prices at $30 to $33, allowing a markup of about 125 percent, rather than the 100 percent level that’s more common.
“We worked backwards,” Press explained. “Why can’t somebody be a boutique-oriented brand and allow them to make a profit?”
The jeans are made of Italian fabric at a factory in Israel, a nation that has relatively low wages and duty-free trade status with the U.S. Press hopes to do about $4 million in sales this year.
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The line includes five women’s styles of jeans, with rises of 5 to 8 1/2 inches. Each style is available in three fabrics and three washes. The washes are supposed to resemble the natural wear and whiskering that occur to jeans over time.
While an 8 1/2-inch rise is on the high side of the current fashion spectrum, Press said he’s trying to cater to older customers who aren’t comfortable with showing a lot of skin and younger customers whose parents aren’t comfortable with that idea, either.
The’ was scheduled to launch for fall retailing, but the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks slowed the launch. The first shipments went out Oct. 27, in time for the holiday shopping season.
Press said he’s planning to limit the distribution to about 250 specialty stores, partly because the factory he’s using has limited capacity.
“We’ll sell the two great stores in a town, instead of the three stores that would give us the biggest immediate orders,” he said.
The venture is owned by Liberty Apparel, with offices in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Press joined Liberty last spring, when the company agreed to launch a licensed line of Rampage jeans.
Shortly after Press came on board, he said, Liberty and Rampage agreed not to go ahead with the licensing deal, which left Press to come up with a new idea.
He’s already planning spinoff lines to The’. By late spring, he hopes to start shipping a line called Uh’, which will retail for about $14 more and feature one style of jean in one wash per month. For fall, he’s toying with the idea of an even higher-end line that will only be designated by an apostrophe symbol.
“It will become our swoosh,” said Press, adding that he’s intrigued by minimalist names.
“The concept of The’ is that it is one of the most common words and one of the simplest words,” he said. “Yet, it preaches the epitome of something.”
Still, he acknowledged: “It was a bitch to trademark.”
Also for spring retailing, designer Emma Black is launching a signature jeanswear line, with wholesale prices starting at $68. The line revolves around vintage-looking, ready-to-wear silhouettes in denim.
“It’s not about the five-pocket jeans anymore,” the designer said. “Denim is now rtw.”
The styles, which include wide-leg denim pants and skirts, as well as jackets, are intended to mix and match with the designer’s rtw line. For instance, Black said they could be worn with beaded tops for a more casual look.
Eileen Weber, who joined the company from Sheri Bodell last week as vice president of sales for the jeans line, said she expects the new venture to generate sales of about $2 million its first year.
Kenny Zimmerman, the chief executive officer of Emma Black, who founded the company after owning Kenar, said the denim line will continue to follow the strategy he’s set for his company — to build a small, but profitable business.
“Times are changing,” he said. “I’m not going to do what we did with Kenar. You either have to be a billion-dollar company or be small and special.”
He hopes that as the hip, denim brands that have grown up over the past few years seek growth under new corporate owners, boutiques will start to look for new high-end denim brands.
“They’re growing so fast, but we’re going to remain very focused on those hip stores,” he said. “You can’t sell quantity at these prices. And once you sell quantity, they’re faced with markdowns and the little stores can’t compete.”