DAILY EDITION 10 JUNE 2016
1
Bigger Ben
Marquee Brands outlines
growth plans for Ben
Sherman. PAGE 12
London Time
Despite some designer
absences, organizers of
London Collections: Men
stay positive. PAGE 4
Lacquer Up
Christian Louboutin adds
the lip lacquer Loubilaque
to his growing beauty
category. PAGE 11
Fashion. Beauty. Business.
RETAIL
Hudson’s Bay Co.
Net Hurt By Rent,
Performance
Guidance Upheld
●
The retailer’s geographic
diversity is an advantage over
competitors.
BY DAVID MOIN
Hudson’s Bay Co. is feeling the costs of
transformation.
The retailer, pulled down primarily by
rent associated with new real estate joint
ventures and restructuring charges, doubled its net loss for the quarter ended April
30 to 97 million Canadian dollars, or $76.3
million, from 49 million Canadian dollars,
or $38.5 million, in the year-ago period.
However, the Toronto-based retailer
maintained its sales and earnings guidance
for the year and said the impact of rents
would be less in the second half of the
year due to the seasonality of the business. Compared to the first two quarters
of the year, the third and fourth quarters
generate far greater revenues, which will
help offset the rent impact. Several other
CONTINUED ON PG.13
FASHION
Thakoon Plans
September Runway
Show, SoHo Flagship
●
FASHION
Photograph by Giovanna Pavesi
Opposites
Attract
Edgy versus elegant, romantic
versus street-smart, hard versus
soft. Riccardo Tisci’s resort
collection for Givenchy was a
study in contrasts — and how
well they play together, as in this
pairing of a cream tulle-overlaid
coat with black leather overalls.
For more resort,
see pages 7 through 10.
The designer business is
relaunching and building a
team of employees in Hong
Kong.
BY AMANDA KAISER
HONG KONG — Vivian Chou, who bought a
controlling stake in Thakoon Corp. last year,
is preparing to relaunch the business as a
see-now-buy-now proposition with a SoHo
flagship and a New York runway show slated
for September.
Chou is planning to position the label,
designed and founded by Thai-born Thakoon Panichgul, as a high-end sportswear
brand sold exclusively through the New York
flagship and its directly operated e-commerce
site, said a person familiar with the company’s
strategic plan, who requested anonymity.
Accessories and limited-edition products are
expected to figure in the merchandising mix.
Spokesmen for the Chou-backed venture
with Thakoon did not respond to requests for
comment.
Chou is the daughter of Hong Kong mogul
Silas Chou, chief executive officer of the family business Novel Holdings, and former
investor in Tommy Hilfiger and Michael
Kors. It is understood that Vivian Chou
is looking to replicate her father’s
CONTINUED ON PG.13
12
10 JUNE 2016
Looks from
Ben Sherman.
MEN’S
Marquee Brands’ Game
Plan for Ben Sherman
●
Sales are projected to
quadruple within the next five
years.
BY JEAN E. PALMIERI
“It wasn’t mismanaged, it was not
managed.”
So said Cory Baker, chief operating officer
of Marquee Brands LLC, about the company’s
Ben Sherman division.
Marquee, an acquisition, licensing and
development company that was formed
in 2014, purchased the British men’s wear
brand from Oxford Industries last July for
$63.7 million. The London-based brand had
suffered under Oxford primarily because the
group put more emphasis on its other brands
and Ben Sherman fell by the wayside, Baker
believes.
“Oxford has very successful Tommy
Bahama and Lilly Pulitzer businesses and
wasn’t putting any focus on Ben Sherman,”
he said.
That’s changing now.
Since acquiring the brand, Marquee has
transformed the label into a licensed model,
signed up partners in the U.S. and overseas
to expand product categories and add retail
stores, and kicked up its marketing message.
The company is projecting that global sales
will quadruple within the next five years.
“The key for us is to answer the question: If
this brand disappeared, would anyone care,”
said Michael DeVirgilio, president of Marquee
Brands, who joined the company after 17
years at Kenneth Cole. “We put Ben Sherman
through that test and found that there was
recognition, and consumer demand is higher
than the distribution. So we’re bringing product to the people who want it.”
Ben Sherman, which began in Brighton,
England, in 1963, has its roots as a young
men’s, “Mod”-inspired shirt line. It has
since evolved into a lifestyle brand targeting
men between 25 and 40 years old. Oxford
acquired the company in June 2004 for $146
million.
Baker, a lawyer who helped Iconix Brands
double the size of its portfolio during his
tenure there, said that “starting brands and
building brands is a tough business. We
would rather build from assets, legacy and
heritage. It’s easier to curate than create.”
The executive stressed that there is “nothing wrong with Ben Sherman as a brand.” Its
originator was a leader in bringing color to a
drab dress-shirt market by introducing vivid
colors and patterns, a strategy that he soon
extended into other products as well.
“Ben Sherman was a visionary,” Baker
said. “The brand always had a reason to exist
and it’s now our job to telegraph that.”
Under the Marquee operating model, there
is a creative director based in London — Mark
Williams — who is on the Marquee payroll and
works closely with the licensees to ensure a
consistent fashion message. Williams comes
up with the seasonal trends and analysis,
colors and fabrics and “then the licensees
execute it,” Baker explained.
The brand is in several categories including tailored clothing, footwear, children’s
wear, optical and sunglasses, sportswear,
outerwear, neckwear, cold-weather accessories and luggage. Women’s is expected to
be launched in the future. Baker said that
historically, women’s accounted for as much
as 30 percent of the business internationally,
“so demand is there.”
Ben Sherman’s largest market is the U.K.,
followed by the U.S., which DeVirgilio said
represents the brand’s “single biggest market
opportunity.” The brand also has a presence
in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland,
Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, Southeast Asia, the
Philippines and Thailand.
Right now, there is no distribution in
Korea, Japan, China, India, the Middle East
and Latin America, DeVirgilio said, where
there is a potential of $1 billion in retail sales.
But Marquee will reveal today that it has
signed a deal with MRH SpaRotica Groupe
to distribute the brand within Greater China.
The deal will include a retail rollout that
includes at least five freestanding Ben Sherman stores this year, with at least another 30
in the plans for coming years. The first store
will open by August in Shanghai, followed by
Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan and Sichan.
A deal for the Middle East is also close to
being finalized and will result in the opening
of 18 stores in that region.
Today, Ben Sherman has 52 stores around
the world, “but there will be over 150 to 200
in three to five years,” DeVirgilio predicted.
In the U.S., Marquee closed Ben Sherman’s three stores because the locations
were not “optimal,” Baker said, saying the
5,000-square-foot SoHo store was just too
large and the units in the Beverly Center
in L.A. and in San Francisco were mired in
problems. But the company expects to open
10 to 15 units here within the next three to five
years, he said, and will return to SoHo.
Turning to merchandise, since the
company put more emphasis on its licensed
products, the tailored clothing business has
increased by 50 percent and footwear sales
are up 30 percent this year, the company
said. The company also plans on doubling the
U.S. sportswear business and “at least double
or possibly triple the sportswear business in
the U.K.,” Baker said.
Baker said that overall, Ben Sherman’s
business “can easily quadruple” in the next
five years. The executives believe there is
“brand fatigue” at retail, especially in the
U.S., so there’s a hole that Ben Sherman
can fill. “Walk onto any men’s floor and it’s
Calvin, Ralph and Tommy, repeat,” DeVirgilio
said. “There’s no excitement from a brand
and experience standpoint.”
Marquee is ready to invest to make that
vision a reality.
The company is not the typical private
equity player. Instead, it’s bankrolled by
a global asset management firm named
Neuberger Berman that manages $240 billion
in assets and has $500 million of committed
capital for acquisitions.
DeVirgilio said that unlike Authentic
Brands Group, Iconix Group or Sequential
Brands — which own trademarks and act
as pure licensing companies — Marquee
sees itself more of a brand steward. “We’re
not buying royalty streams,” he said. “We
buy brands because we want to make them
better.”
Baker added: “Just because we have private
equity money behind us, we don’t run like a
private equity firm. We’re not in this to sell
in three to five years. We have a long-term
view.”
DeVirgilio stressed that because of the
money it has behind it, Marquee has no need
to leverage the businesses it buys either.
Marquee’s first acquisition was Bruno
Magli, a luxury shoe brand that was founded
in 1936, that Marquee acquired in early
2015. The company stabilized the business,
relaunched its women’s collection and
named actress Lucy Liu as its ambassador,
signed a license with Marcraft Apparel Group
to produce the first men’s tailored clothing
collection and mapped out plans for a retail
rollout in the U.S. and Europe.
Now Ben Sherman is the focus. Step one
was the brand’s return to the fashion world
— it held its first presentation in London on
Wednesday on the eve of London Collections:
Men, which starts today.
Other marketing initiatives include
tweaking its branding and logo to focus on
its British heritage and the Union Jack. That
logo was front and center on the fleet of Ben
Sherman taxicabs that drove editors around
New York City earlier this year and VIPs and
influencers to the MTV Awards and Coachella
in California. The brand is also sponsoring
the New York City Football Club, has flooded
outdoor spaces with advertising in New York,
London, Berlin and Cologne, Germany, and
the brand also instituted a print ad campaign.
In terms of merchandising, Ben Sherman
collaborated with Alpha Industries and Pendleton Woolen Mills last fall on co-branded
product.
“These are things the former ownership
just didn’t do,” DeVirgilio said. “The year
before we acquired the brand, they spent
$35,000 on marketing. We spent that much
an hour after we bought it.”
Now that the Ben Sherman strategy is
being implemented, what other brands might
Marquee be interested in adding to its stable?
Baker said the goal is to “acquire brands
that people want, not dead brands.”
DeVirgilio added: “We’ve probably looked
at 250 deals in the last 12 months in the consumer brands sector.” The goal is to diversify,
the company said, so some additions may be
in the mass sector, athletic arena, food and
beverage — a strategy that allows Marquee to
mitigate risk if one industry goes south.
The company is looking at brands outside
the U.S. as well. “We’re not U.S.-centric,”
Baker said. “There are very significant brands
that are hugely impactful in Europe and Asia
and we don’t want to have a myopic view.”
Ben Sherman
Resort 2017
Ben Sherman staged a one-off men’s presentation in London this week using a trio of references — California cool, Sixties jazz and British
Ska — for its Modern Rhythm range for spring/
summer 2017.
The brand hosted a presentation at 9 Adams
Street on Wednesday night, where models
marched to upbeat tunes or posed on podiums.
Sherman showed its collection before the start
of London Collections: Men, which runs from
today through Monday.
Creative director Mark Williams said he looked
to Liam Bridges and Mark Ronson as muses for
the collection. “We’ve got a little bit of an English
guy on the West Coast kind of feeling going on,”
Williams told WWD.
For spring, the brand also re-issued shirts
from its archive: One from the Sixties, one from
the Seventies and one from the Eighties. “We’ve
gone back into an archive that we actually didn’t
even realize that we had,” said Williams.
“Designers have handed in shirts, we’ve have
fans of the brand handing in shirts to us from
the Sixties and the Seventies. We’ve actually
branded the shirts in the original Ben Sherman
signature. They’re really special.”
The collection consisted of outerwear such
as Crombie coats or lightweight nylon jackets
styled with chinos. Blue linen shorts suits were
paired with white shirts and shiny tassel loafers.
The brand also worked laminated wools, cotton
sateens and textured fabrics into tailored polo
shirts and printed shorts.
There were also bespoke British florals on
shorts and button-down shirts.
Footwear came in various forms, including
espadrille hybrids, sneakers, loafers and leather
slides. Williams experimented with footwear as
in a derby shoe done in denim. Espadrilles came
in nubuck leather while sneakers were done with
brogue elements such as decorative perforations. — LORELEI MARFIL