California Apparel News

What’s in a name? When it comes to branding, quite a bit.

Apparel manufacturers know the value of establishing the right label that has an identity, conveys a story, and provides a proven track record in quality and coolness.

That’s why JNCO, the Los Angeles blue jeans line for urban boys and teens favored by ravers and skaters, is making a comeback next year after disappearing from the store shelves in early 2005.

“Daily, I get e-mails from consumers’ mothers asking where they can find JNCO clothing for their kids who are returning to school. They say they won’t wear anything else,” said Jacob Abikzer, president and chief operating officer of Revah Holdings, the parent company of the blue jeans labels JNCO, J&Company and Born in California.

But Revah Holdings will be taking JNCO jeans a bit more upscale, targeting specialty retailers and higher-end department stores willing to pay the $70–$80 retail price tag that will be on the renewed JNCO. That’s up from the $35–$40 JNCO jeans line that used to sell at mid-tier stores such as J.C. Penney and Kohl’s, where JNCO was widely distributed.

Rebranding and revising old labels have become popular pastimes in the apparel and retail industries as clothing executives count on nostalgia to turn a profit. But banking on an old name has to be done with finesse, said Paul Erle, president and founder of River West Brands, a Chicago-based brand acquisition and redevelopment firm.

The best way to bring back new life to an old brand is to get the creative juices flowing and think outside of the box when developing new products. “Oftentimes you go to market in a very different way than the brand did in its first run,” Erle explained.

Take, for example, Abercrombie & Fitch Co., which used to be a rather staid, upper-crust outfitting store for wannabe Teddy Roosevelts ready to fly off on exotic safaris. The brand, established in 1892, was reformatted in 1992 when a new management team came on board. The executives turned the retail chain on its ear, relying on the brand’s reputation for durability and dependability to cater to a trendy, youthful crowd that has helped grow the company to a nearly $2.8 billion entity with more than 850 stores.

Creating a new idea helps find a new consumer. So too does latching on to a label’s story and marketing it in new ways. “You can craft and weave that tale that is entirely attractive to a new demographic,” brand expert Erle said. “Look at Puma, which darn near went away. Today, the trendy hipsters are wearing Puma. These people weren’t even alive when the brand had its first run.”

JNCO will still be going after the same age group but with a slightly different product. It will be retooling its brand to target a more fashion-forward customer, who will help the company produce higher profit margins.

At its peak in the mid- to late 1990s, annual sales hit $200 million. Then they lagged to a little more than $100 million during the line’s last full year of operation in 2004.

Revah Holdings, which launched its pricier J&Company line in 2003, decided to drop JNCO while it concentrated on the women’s line, which saw its denim pants sell for $120–$180. J&Company sales reached $20 million last year and will rise to $30 million this year, marketing director Haley Gottlieb said.

For many jeans companies, premium-denim lines have been the ideal way to boost profit margins even though sales volumes may decline. Historically, premium-denim lines generate a 50 percent gross margin, while mid-tier jeans see 25 percent to 30 percent gross margins.

Revah would like to keep those higher margins and avoid dealing with mid-tier stores that are aggressive in doling out charge-back fees and asking for discounts. “It’s a very tricky relationship,” Abikzer said.

When JNCO is revived, it will have the same creative vibe with designer Silvio Marceca back on board after a six-year absence.

Seeking a new customer

Other brands that have lain dormant for long spells have been successful in being reincarnated by appealing to a different customer.

One of those is Instinct, a men’s surfwear line founded in the mid-1980s by South African surfer Sean Tomson. The line fizzled out in the early 1990s after Tomson and his business partners had a parting of ways. Tomson bought back the worldwide rights to the brand, excluding South Africa, and relaunched the label in early 2006 from the company’s headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif. But instead of targeting the original surf dudes that were followers of Tomson, a surfing legend, the label is marketing its line of T-shirts and boardshorts to boys ages 6 to 14, the children of those surf rats who have a fond place in their heart for the label. “We knew if we went back with the original line we would have to attack labels like Rip Curl and Billabong,” said Tom Brown, Instinct’s vice president of sales and marketing.

Gone are the bright pinks and lime greens so prevalent during the first run of the shorts and T-shirts that Tomson launched while on the surfing circuit. The only thing left over from the old Instinct line is the brand’s distinctive logo of a surfer inside a wave.

Tomson’s cousin Michael, another South African surfer, started the Gotcha line in 1978. It was based in Newport Beach, Calif., before being acquired early this year by Perr y Ellis International, owner of labels such as the Original Penguin, John Henry and Redsand.

Branding experts say the advantage of working with an old but dormant brand is that the name conveys a certain comfort level for boomers pining for the labels of their youth.

Such was the case with Ocean Pacific Apparel Corp., or Op, the California brand that cool kids wore in the 1970s. By the late ’80s and early ’90s, the label was treading water, being produced by licensees and sold at mid-tier stores that didn’t earn it any respect among the hip beach crowd that helped make Op a success.

The brand, now based in Irvine, Calif., got a shot in the arm when Dick Baker, a former executive with Tommy Hilfiger, Esprit and Bullock’s department stores, joined the company in 1997 as its chief executive.

“For the previous 10 to 15 years, it had settled into multiple distribution channels and had no focus,” Baker recalled. “It had vacated the surf shops.”

The idea was to make the brand cool again to the 12- to 25- year-old consumer, while competing with brands such as Quiksilver, Pacific Sunwear and Billabong.

To do that, Op started sponsoring surfers, skateboarders and musicians. It also began backing an annual surf championship in Huntington Beach, Calif., which was called the Op Pro Surfing Championship.

The brand really started to develop in 2000, when Nat Norfleet, head of design at the time, revived the Op cord walking short—a classic—and the vintage striped knit shirt. “We studied the trends and saw that everything was trending vintage,” said Norfleet, now head of design at Sperry Top-Sider, which is developing a new apparel line. Norfleet perused old files, advertisements and magazines to get a sense of the old line. He also combed flea markets and vintage stores searching for original pieces. “We brought the cord short and the striped shirt back, and it took off,” he recalled, with the line being called Op Classic. “We did update things a little with better fabrics and washes.”

The relaunch of the brand was so successful that, in 2004, the Warnaco Group bought the company for $41 million. Baker is still the chief executive.