M&A
Not Your Daughter’s Jeans Fetches Top Price
Los Angeles blue-jeans company Not Your Daughter’s Jeans has been sold to a group of New York investors in a multi-million-dollar deal that closes in early January.
The transaction with Crestview Partners and Maybrook Capital Partners is valued at $385 million for almost 100 percent of the company, said co-founder George Rudes.
Revenues for the company this year are on track to be $200 million, with the company’s biggest client being Nordstrom. The sale price was valued at seven times EBITDA, also known as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
After the purchase is finished in January, former VF Corp. Chief Executive Officer Mackey McDonald will be brought on board as chairman of the company. The Rudes family will retain a small portion of the company.
Not Your Daughter’s Jeans was founded in 2003 when Lisa Rudes-Sandel, George’s daughter, was shopping at a high-end department store in Los Angeles and couldn’t find a pair of contemporary jeans that fit her figure. Frustrated, she had the idea to create a product that catered to the over- 35-year-old woman who liked to be stylish but couldn’t fit into her daughter’s jeans.
Lisa went back to her family’s decades-old women’s sportswear company, called St. Germain, and started tinkering. While she was searching for a bold new jean that fit the not-so-young crowd, she and her sister, Leslie, started Not Your Daughter’s Jeans.
Soon, they pulled their father, then 74 and living in Boca Raton, Fla., out of retirement.
After some tinkering, the company in 2005 brought out the “tummy tuck” jean, a pant with a band of Lycra across the tummy that made women look and feel a size smaller. It became an instant success and was carried by major department stores such as Nordstrom, Macy’s and Dillard’s.
In 2008, five years after the Rudes family launched the company, also known as NYDJ Apparel, they sold 50 percent of the company to Falconhead Capital, a New York private-equity firm, for approximately $100 million. Falconhead Capital has been shopping the company around for a few years.
The Rudes family has not been active in the day-to-day operation of the company, but the family does want to keep its hand in the business. “This company is like my baby,” George Rudes said. “I want to feel part of the operations. I don’t want to finish that part of my life."
