NEW YORK — The product was there — it was the image that needed a little tweaking.
Susan White and Barbara Benenson Warren, co-founders of White + Warren, a knitwear label, had consistent sales and a loyal fan base for eight years, but last year the pair decided their brand needed a boost.
“Business took off tremendously, but then we asked ourselves, ‘What do we really look like?'” Warren said, seated in the company’s showroom here overlooking Bryant Park. In seeking an answer to her own question, Warren and her partner took a close look at their brand — from hangtags to stationery to their Web site — and concluded it needed a makeover. “We hired No. 11 to polish us up,” Warren said.
No. 11, a boutique creative agency in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, has revamped the images of companies such as Victoria’s Secret, Yohji Yamamoto, The Gap and L’Oréal, among others. Last week, its founder, Giovanni Russo, was named global creative director for Clinique and will lead Clinique’s global advertising, design and merchandising initiatives, while continuing to work on projects for No. 11.
“We had to get a sense of what they’ve done, where they’re going and how they want to grow,” Russo said. “We felt like a lot of younger women would like to be exposed to the brand.”
No. 11 collaborated with White + Warren to create a timeless, clean look that appealed to its core consumer — women aged 25 to 55, but updated it for the newly coveted, younger, contemporary consumer.
“The image and the brand has to be consistent,” Russo said. “I really tried to figure out what the world of White + Warren is: What type of car [the consumer] drives and what kind of house she lives in.”
The line, with its roots in cashmere, retails in more than 500 specialty boutiques across the country.
The result of the collaboration was a sleeker logo with a trimmed-down font; the incorporation of dual blue and tan boxes that would appear on the company’s stationery; a label made of a more substantial, luxe fabric, and a sleek Web site with updated, sophisticated photographs. No. 11 completed the transformation in three months. The company predicts its wholesale volume will exceed $20 million in the U.S. in 2005 — the company’s best year to date, up from 10 percent from a year ago.
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“We’ve added a lot of luxury to the line,” said White, referring to the addition of jeweled-neck cardigans and fur-trimmed pieces to the fall line that will hit stores Aug. 15. And as glossies such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle continue to snatch up White + Warren merchandise for fashion editorials, White and Warren anticipate fashion-savvy consumers will visit their Web site (whiteandwarren.com) and are assured the imagery is now consistent with the brand’s offerings.
“Now that the product has been featured in all of these magazines, it gives the brand legitimacy,” White said. “Getting credit in the press set a whole new tone for us.”
Vogue featured its August covergirl, Madonna, in a White + Warren cashmere boyfriend sweater (wholesaling for $115), increasing the buzz surrounding the brand and driving traffic to the company’s Web site.
The transformation of the brand has been strategic. The wholesale price has risen slightly from an average of $65 three years ago, to its current average of $90 after the company started using more luxe fabrics and embellishments. From 2003 to 2004, the company had an increase of more than 30 percent in wholesale volume. It will start advertising in regional magazines this fall, and has added a full men’s collection. Now, White + Warren has its eye on a home collection.
“If we’re selling the right image, we can take it to the next level,” White said.