Despite his history, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Alan Victor would go into the family business.
The now-chief executive officer of Jack Victor, the men’s tailored clothing and lifestyle brand, had explored a lot of career paths before joining the company founded by his grandfather. But since he took over the helm of the Montreal-based company in 2011, he has been instrumental in modernizing the brand and expanding its reach beyond suits to a full lifestyle collection with a customer list that includes Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Holt Renfrew.
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Next year, Jack Victor will celebrate its 110th anniversary and the evolution will continue as the brand is added to more doors and its offering continues to expand.
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As the story goes, a young Jack Wigdorovici left Romania in 1907 with just the clothes on his back and eventually settled in the remote Quebec town of La Tuque, 180 miles northeast of Montreal. He started out selling clothes door-to-door before opening a clothing store, which soon became popular with railroad workers, loggers and miners.
He expanded with stores in other Quebec towns before deciding to sell the business and move to Montreal to work as a salesman for the Royal Brand Clothing Co., which had been one of his suppliers. He was eventually made a partner in the company and when the founders died, he purchased the business in 1947 and changed its name to Jack Victor and Sons Ltd.
Jack Victor eventually passed the reins to his son, Herschel, who ran the business for more than six decades. It was during that time that the company built a seven-story factory in downtown Montreal and produced both outerwear and suits under the Shipley name, which were popular in the Canadian market. (The company still has a 150,000-square-foot factory that employs 800 people in the city.)
When the North American Free Trade Agreement passed in the late ’80s, Herschel Victor saw the opportunity to bring his newly launched Jack Victor label to the U.S. market. He opened a U.S. office in 1994 and hired the late Paul Diamond to be president of the new division.
While the brand continued to expand its reach both in its home market and in the U.S., Alan Victor was charting his own path, one that included moving from Montreal to Southern California and getting both an MBA and a law degree.
“I wanted to try different things,” he said. “I grew up listening to my father talk about the business at the dinner table every night and eventually that drips into your head. I worked there part-time in high school and college, but then I applied to UCLA to get my MBA. I stayed in California for 12 years until my dad called and said, ‘I’m 63. I want you to try to come back to the family business.’
“I agreed to do it for a year,” Victor said. “But 33 years later, I’m still here.”
Once he made the decision to stay, Victor threw himself into the task, much like his father and grandfather before him. “It’s got to be on your mind 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. “When I came back to Canada, I didn’t know what to expect, but I developed the same passion as the previous generations.”
Although Jack Victor is still known for its quality, Made in Canada suits, over the past decade Alan Victor has expanded into a variety of categories to address the needs of the modern man. Jersey knit sport coats, suede jackets, printed sport shirts, polo crews and five-pocket pants are all part of the mix today.
“Over the last 10 years, we’ve changed our strategy,” Victor said. That strategy kicked into high gear in the spring of 2020 when the company brought James Watson, a veteran of Eleventy, Michael Kors and Slowear, on board as its creative director.
“James expanded our categories and is helping us fulfill our vision to become an important lifestyle brand,” Victor said.
He said that he had started thinking about offering more casual lifestyle pieces years ago, “but the pandemic was the motivating factor. It gave us time to reflect on what we need to be and to put together the right team.”
While “sleeves,” as he calls it, or traditional suits and sport coats, are still Jack Victor’s core business, the more casual pieces are where the company envisions the primary growth in the future.
Although the privately held company would not disclose a volume figure, Victor said the top line grew at a double-digit rate from 2016 through 2019 and after a pandemic blip, it is back to a similar growth rate this year. The sales increases are being driven by sportswear, but thanks to the return to work and rescheduled events, tailored clothing and suits as well as formalwear are also reaping the benefits. Specifically, it’s the jersey sport coats and other hybrid models that are leading the way, the company said.
“In the last 18 months, the demand for tailoring has accelerated at a dramatic pace,” Victor said. “The demand exceeded the supply.”
In addition to its fashion offerings, Victor said the company is also differentiated by the fact that it still manufactures the bulk of its products at its Montreal factory. “When my dad came here, there were over 50 companies with factories downtown,” he said. “The area used to be the central hub of men’s clothing manufacturing in Canada. Today we’re the only company still in that area and we’re very proud to be able to keep that legacy going.”
Other Canadian manufacturers such as Peerless and Samuelsohn also have factories in Montreal, but they’re outside the city center.
Victor said the majority of Jack Victor’s business, or around two-thirds, comes from the U.S. market, where it has a strong presence in specialty stores as well as at high-end department stores. The remaining one-third comes from Canada, which has a significantly smaller population despite its size.
With suits retailing for $898 to $1,298, jackets for $698 to $998, sport shirts for $198 to $278, sweaters for $198 to $398 and knit ties for $128, Jack Victor represents the opening price point for many of its 300 retail clients in the U.S. and 130 in Canada.
The company also offers both a stock book and a made-to-order option with a wide range of fabric choices from which retailers can place orders when needed instead of having to pay upfront for inventory and carry stock in their stores. “It’s a very valuable tool to a retailer,” he said. “We can deliver in four to five weeks and fit everyone. It’s becoming a bigger part of our business in the U.S.”
Earlier this year, the company launched an e-commerce site where it sells directly to consumers, spurred on in large part by the health crisis. “The pandemic pushed us,” he said, adding that he envisions this as an avenue for growth going forward.
In addition to the Jack Victor brand, the company has a long-standing licensing deal with Ted Baker under which it has produced tailored clothing for the British company for the past 12 years. Although Ted Baker brand recently inked a deal to be sold to Authentic Brands Group, Victor said he’s looking forward to working with the new owners to continue to expand the collection.
In 2015, Victor partnered with Montreal designer Robert Barakett and his sportswear brand. Together, they have expanded the line to 150 doors including Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue. “He’d been designing sportswear for 25 years and he called me a few years ago and asked if I was interested in partnering with him to operate the business. We were, and that’s what launched my company into sportswear.”
The Barakett collection is more casual than the Jack Victor offering with gilets, hoodies and the core Barakett T-shirt as its key items.
As Jack Victor approaches its 110th anniversary, Victor still envisions a long runway of growth for the brand. In addition to enhancing its offerings in high-end sportswear and expanding its direct-to-consumer presence, Victor is considering bringing the brand to other countries beyond North America.
“This is a very different company today,” he said. “Our history was a great tailored clothing house and a classification business, but we’re not just a suitmaker anymore. Our vision is to become a respected omnichannel lifestyle collection.”