Texas Company Buys City Girl
City Girl Inc., a more than 60-year-old apparel company with several contemporary misses sportswear labels, has been sold to a Texas firm.
Ron Perilman, president, chief executive and part-owner of City Girl, said he had been searching for a buyer for nearly two years and finally found one when Sharon Young Inc., based in Dallas, agreed to purchase the company.
Terms of the deal, signed Aug. 9, were not disclosed. But Ed Vierling, chairman and chief executive of Sharon Young, said it was an asset purchase, with the Texas firm acquiring most of City Girl’s labels, such as City Girl by Nancy Bolen, City Girl Sport and Marie St. Monet. The Ruby Cho label was not included in the sale.
Perilman said he would be leaving the company towork on his own projects, which include helping his wife, Jill Schliesman Perilman, produce a series of self-published books in a “DenimHead” series on denim trends. He also is going to take the expertise he developed while sourcing City Girl’s apparel and work with other apparel manufacturers to find overseas garment factories.
Nancy Bolen, the company’s head designer and a co-owner, will be staying with the firm, where she has worked since the late 1970s. “Everything is going to stay the same,” Bolen said. “The attitude and the line are going to stay the same, with the signature look that I have created through the years.”
Under the new ownership, the company is moving out of its 62,000-square-foot warehouse headquarters in Commerce, Calif., and into another space nearby. City Girl Inc. will keep its name and be a separate company under Sharon Young. Vierling will be the company’s president and Bolen will be the executive vice president of merchandising and design.
For years, Sharon Young, also a contemporary misses label, has competed with City Girl for customers. “Nancy has a loyal account base and has carved out a nice niche in the marketplace for her product,” Vierling said.
City Girl has been operating with a reduced staff of 20 people while a buyer was found. More recently its staff numbered 68 people.
Long history in L.A.
City Girl was started in 1945 as California Swimwear. In 1964, Morris Minken, the owner, launched the City Girl label. The company officially changed its name to City Girl in the late 1980s.
Perilman joined the company in 1981 as a salesman in Chicago. He later became vice president of sales, then executive vice president and part owner in 1988.
When Minken died in 1994, Perilman took over as president and chief executive, and Bolen, who started with the company as a fit model, became vice president and part owner.
Sales at the company, whose customer base is geared toward women 35 years and older, have declined over the past few years. Last year, City Girl had $25 million in revenue, down from $37 million in 1996. This year, the company is expected to bring in $21 million to $23 million, Perilman said.
In recent years, City Girl has turned to overseas factories to do 95 percent of its production. About 5 percent of the collection, such as simple tank tops and T-shirts, is done in Los Angeles. The company has a sourcing office in Hong Kong, which the new owners will keep.
Vierling said his goal was to make the transition to new ownership as seamless as possible in order to grow the brands. “We are going to be keeping the strong City Girl design and production team together to secure the consistency of the design and the quality of the product.”
