Name Change for Blue-Jeans Company
When the Innovo Group started up in 1987 as a small company in Texas, it was making cnvas and nylon products for the sports licensing and advertising specialty markets.
Now it is making premium blue jeans under the Joe’s Jeans label in Los Angeles. With that in mind, the company announced at its annual shareholder meeting on Oct. 11 that it is changing its name to Joe’s Jeans and will be traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol JOEZ rather than INNO.
As part of the deal, Joe Dahan, the designer of Joe’s Jeans and owner of the label, was awarded 14 million shares to purchase the label. The stock was trading at $1.61 a share on Oct. 11. The label was launched in 2001.
The company decided a new name was in order to better reflect what the company does. “We wanted to align ourselves with the Joe’s brand,” said Dustin Huffine, senior vice president of investor relations and general counsel. “We have sold off our other assets and are focusing on growing the Joe’s asset.”
Innovo used to have a larger stable of labels aligned with designer Betsey Johnson as well as hip-hop artists such as Eve and Little Bow Wow. Those products didn’t sell well and were dropped from the company’s lineup.
But Joe’s Jeans has been the best performer of them all. The company expects revenues to hit $60 million this year, compared with $46.6 million last year. The company has had a hard time being profitable. Last year the company had a net loss of $9.2 million.
With that in mind, the company next year will shift more production to Mexico. Currently 50 percent of the jeans are manufactured in Los Angeles and the other 50 percent in Mexico. By next year, the company hopes to make 80 percent to 90 percent of its jeans in Mexico, Huffine said.
—Deborah Belgum
