Sportswear Co. Snags the Catch of the Day
The San Francisco–based Blue Marlin Corp. hired Ian Eburah, the senior designer for Levi Strauss & Co., last week. The hiring was part of an effort to take Blue Marlin from a vintage-inspired sportswear enterprise specializing in jackets and T-shirts to a lifestyle brand with a full collection for men and women.
Eburah is joined by Kelly Wolfson, who did developing and sourcing at Levi’s. She was hired Feb. 24, the same day as Eburah. They will both start working at Blue Marlin on March 8.
Eburah and Wolfson will handle the design and development of the 9-year-old company’s premium workwear line, said Blue Marlin President Erik Steube. The line will debut in Spring 2005 and feature woven shirts, bottoms and jackets without the vintage sports themes that have made Blue Marlin popular at contemporary casual boutiques such as Santa Monica, Calif.–based Planet Americana and at such majors as Bloomingdale’s. The collection will focus on work-inspired canvas and twill apparel, such as utility pants and work pants. It will not focus on the five-pocket jeans that have made Levi’s an American icon.
Planet Americana owner Ian Stewart Daniels said the expansion is a step in the right direction.
“People ask for this brand,” said Daniels, who has been selling Blue Marlin, with retail price points ranging from $20 to $70, for more than five years. “I’ve had people come in from the industry [and] say it’s some of the best casual lifestyle sportswear out there. I think they’ve been copied a lot. There’s a lot of Blue Marlin–esque stuff out there.”
Other retailers say Blue Marlin sells well because its style happens to be in vogue now. “Blue Marlin does well, but all of the vendors for T-shirts do well,” said Marcus P., a sales associate for Barneys New York who did not wish to give his full last name. “The shirts have an athletic fit, and they have the names of cities like Brooklyn and Havana on them. People like that.”
Steube made other announcements about Blue Marlin’s expansion:
bull; On March 1, Blue Marlin opened a 1,600-square-foot showroom in downtown Los Angeles’ Gerr y Building. This is Blue Marlin’s second showroom, the first being in New York.
bull; In late November, Blue Marlin, in a partnership with the Mitsubishi Corp. in Japan, opened a 1,000-squarefoot flagship store in Tokyo’s Harajuku district, a popular youth hangout. In mid-2003, Mitsubishi opened two other Blue Marlin stores in Japan, one near the Tokyo Dome and the other in Okinawa.
These expansions follow a stellar 2003 for Blue Marlin. The company’s retail sales grew from $20 million in 2002 to $50 million last year.
“Everything came together on the product side and marketing,” said Steube, explaining the company’s new frontier in sales. “The brand has a lot of credibility. People are familiar with it because it’s been around for such a while.”
The boost came after a long marketing effort concentrating on hipster magazines, including Urb, Vice and Vibe. Splashed across the pages of the youth-oriented magazines were prominent advertisements featuring Blue Marlin’s hoodies and track jackets, usually bearing bold legends of city names along with the company’s trademark five-star logo. Steube did not disclose Blue Marlin’s advertising budget.
Steube began contemplating the idea of expanding the line after specialty retailers told him their customers were interested in a bigger collection. At the same time, Steube met Wolfson and Eburah, an experienced jeans designer who worked at Diesel jeans before joining Levi’s.
The Fall 2004 collection will add more designs to the existing headwear line. In the past, the line was limited to baseball caps, but the new line will include newsboy caps, militarycut caps, fedoras and knit headwear.
Blue Marlin’s Spring 2004 men’s and women’s collection will comprise track jackets and pants bearing the names of cities such as Saigon and Athens, as well as vintage and cotton jerseys and cotton Oxford shirts.
Steube entered the apparel business after working as the chief financial officer for sporting goods company PAI Inc. in Oakbrook, Ill. He then took consulting jobs with West Coast apparel companies.
Previously, financing had been Steube’s career track. In 1988, he started working as an investment banker for Kidder Peabody & Co. in New York. Later he earned a master’s degree in business administration at Harvard University, graduating in 1992 with the goal of being his own boss.
“A lot of people joined large companies out of Harvard,” Steube said. “I always knew I wanted to do my own thing, something where you make a tangible product and where you can be a little creative.”
In 1995, Blue Marlin started by manufacturing replicas of baseball hats from the Negro, Latin and minor leagues of the 1920s through 1940s. The hats, carried by Barneys and Urban Outfitters, were an immediate success.
