Juicy Couture co-founder Gela Nash-Taylor is anything but corporate — even though Liz Claiborne Inc. owns her company.
“All right, hold on, because that’s a supercorporate question,” Nash-Taylor said, addressing a question from Arnold Aronson, managing director of retail strategies at Kurt Salmon Associates. He wanted to know if she and her partner, Pamela Skaist-Levy, had developed a set of risks. “Can you say that in, like, people speak? Try it again.”
After a second shot at the question, Nash-Taylor understood.
“Of course I think there are risks, but right now we are just beginning, and it’s so exciting. I just spent $2,000 in my own store on Madison, it looked so good.”
Skaist-Levy and Nash-Taylor’s positive energy and sunny Los Angeles-influenced attitude, mixed with their Valley-girl speak, is what Juicy Couture has been based on since it launched in 1997.
“We are about color, L.A. sunshine and fun — that’s Juicy,” she said. “People come to me in the office every day talking about wanting new titles. I actually do not like titles, unless of course those titles have an HRH after them, like maybe queen would be okay, princess is great, even Lady Juicy would be good.”
Juicy Couture multiplied its growth by more than six times in the last four years alone, Nash-Taylor said, since becoming known for making the tracksuit fashionable in 2001. Now it has expanded to become an almost $1 billion lifestyle brand. Juicy Couture offers an array of product categories, from accessories to men’s wear to dog apparel. In addition, Juicy plans to open 20 stores in 2007, adding to the 19 existing units operating worldwide.
“For me, it’s all about product,” she said. “So my advice is, make your product, put it out there and see if there’s a response. If people like it and want to buy it, you are in business. That’s how we started…we started with $200, and today, we are the American dream.”
Juicy Couture began in Nash-Taylor’s hometown, Los Angeles. In the beginning, every bit of fabric was made in the U.S. The co-founders were so proud of their true California-based line that the label read “Made in the Glamorous U.S.A.”
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“We needed to do that because we were little baby designers, and we needed to touch everything, we needed to see it, we needed to make sure that it was right,” she explained. “As a result of that, we sort of trained a lot of these L.A. factories and opened the door for a lot of new L.A. labels like C&C, James Perse, on and on and on. Maria Shriver actually put us in the California state museum as two women who have made a contribution to the state of California.”
As the brand became bigger and there was a demand for more product, Nash-Taylor realized the need to manufacture outside of the U.S., which led her to think on a global scale.
“Our first ‘Made in China’ label, we wanted to say, ‘Made in illustrious China,’ but the trademark office didn’t think it was as funny as we did, so we weren’t allowed to do that,” she said.
With such growth, Nash-Taylor said she knew that Juicy would not be where it is without the help of Claiborne. She admits to being intimidated by the professionals dressed in suits at a large corporation, but knew that in order to grow, they had to get help.
“We needed a partner. We needed someone to help us build our infrastructure,” she said. “We are not incredibly disciplined, most entrepreneurs probably aren’t. So Liz Claiborne, my favorite chief financial officer in the world, Mike Scarpa, and of course, Paul Charron, aka ‘sugar daddy,’ entered our world to make all of our Juicy dreams come true.”
Charron has said that while Nash-Taylor and Skaist-Levy were new to the corporate world when he met them, he felt their passion for the brand right away, leading him to add the Juicy brand to the company’s thick portfolio. Now, Charron calls Juicy Couture a power brand.
“The corporate world isn’t our world, but I know that we’ve taught them a lot,” Nash-Taylor said of the executives at Claiborne. “We taught them about a brand that is separate from all of their other brands. We taught them about Europe, about our international business, about being individuals, about image being everything. I think they’ve learned a lot about us. We proved to them that you really don’t have to be a suit to be a success.”
It did, however, take a lot of learning on both sides.
“In the beginning, Pam and I would walk into their daily board meetings and both of us, we are really like hurricane Juicy, we were talking and laughing. Paul Charron’s secretary would say, ‘You’re so loud, shh, just walk through quietly.'”
Nash-Taylor said that although there are plenty of corporate people working on the Juicy brand, she does have some prerequisites when it comes to hiring.
“We look for people that are talented and have a sense of humor,” she said. “That kills Liz Claiborne when we say, ‘Are they funny?’ But that counts in my world, I have to laugh. Pam and I have to laugh. I also think everyone at Juicy has a dog. I don’t know if that’s a prerequisite, but they all do.”
And so the expansion of the Juicy empire continues. Nash-Taylor said that it’s really only the beginning, and there will be much more to come. Soon, the company will add a home collection and cosmetics line.
“We have ideas, endless ideas everyday: Juicy goes to London, where we have the most divine showroom on Bruton Street. Juicy goes to France, Juicy goes wearing Juicy day-of-the-week underpants, and we bring with us charm bracelets and Christmas-tree ornaments that say things like ‘Don’t Flake,'” she said.
For now, there are more store openings in the works, and Nash-Taylor continues working with her husband, Duran Duran bass guitarist John Taylor, on the Juicy Couture men’s line, which launched in 2004.
“The men’s line was a very difficult thing to do because we are such a girly-girl line,” she explained. “Our men’s line is really the opposite. It is steeped in rock ‘n’ roll. It’s totally obsessed with heraldry and anything that has to do with England.”
Nash-Taylor said she has plenty of ideas to add to the Juicy Couture empire, all while keeping the brand pure and focused.
“What we brought to the world really was L.A. style,” she stressed. “Our collections are all about fit, which we were totally obsessed with and still are, and fabric — it’s about wearable, accessible clothing. It is couture for the masses…it’s really a spoof, it’s the opposite of couture.”