Jak & Rae Label to be Dropped
Two months after announcing a refreshed vision and hiring designer Coco Kliks, Jak & Rae, the better contemporary label started by Los Angeles juniorswear manufacturer Hot Kiss, will be discontinued after the Summer 2007 season.
Instead, most of the design team will be merged with Hot Kiss’ younger diffusion line, Emphasis.
Featuring similar styling but a lower price point, Emphasis launched in October 2005 to lure shoppers who liked the Jak & Rae aesthetic but didn’t want to pay upwards of $400 for a cropped jacket or top.
Moshe Tsabag, president and founder of parent company Hot Kiss, said retailers often bought both lines, but shoppers overwhelmingly opted for Emphasis.
“Emphasis is blowing out at retail because the price point is more popular. It is very similar, and with prices of $100 or $120, shoppers feel more comfortable making impulse buys with Emphasis. At [Jak & Rae’s] $250 to $400 price points, buyers became more conservative. The result is Emphasis was selling four times as much as Jak & Rae,” Tsabag said.
In response, Hot Kiss is “putting all its eggs in one basket” and discontinuing Jak & Rae to focus on Emphasis, “rather than split our efforts between the two,” Tsabag said.
The Jak & Rae team, minus Kliks, will now design Emphasis. Joe Pham, who founded Jak & Rae and Emphasis before leaving earlier this year, will return to design Emphasis.
Tsabag is confident that high-end specialty retailers will respond well to carrying just the lower-price line, saying the move was precipitated by a shift at the retail level. “They want to carry what the shopper will buy,” he said, noting that the new Emphasis will be a hybrid of Jak & Rae’s high-end styling and Emphasis’ retail- friendly pricing. Emphasis, which is manufactured domestically and overseas, will retail in 650 boutiques and department stores.
Jak & Rae isn’t the only line to be bested by its diffusion line. Designer Michelle Mason folded her eponymous designer line to focus on Mason, its contemporary, retail-friendly little sister line, in 2004 when it became clear Mason was successfully poaching business from the designer line. “The average consumer didn’t understand why two similar pieces by the same designer had such different prices,” Mason said. —Erin Barajas
