COAT FIRMS ON WEATHER WATCH
Byline: Leonard McCants / Julee Greenberg
NEW YORK — Two winning seasons in a row have been hard to come by for outerwear.
Coming off of the last fall-winter season — the best in many years — coat makers have their fingers crossed that the second half of 2001 holds more cold, snowy weather in store.
“The entire market is nervous about what is going to happen in the third and fourth quarters,” said Fredric Stollmack, president of Weatherproof Garment Co., which made its first foray into women’s outerwear last year. “But if we have a winter that approximates last year, we’ll have a banner year.”
With warmer winters the norm rather than the exception in the last decade or so, executives are hoping last year was the beginning of a cycle. But they also acknowledge that Mother Nature may not cooperate and the economy may not awaken from its first-half slumber, so they’re ramping up their fashionable offerings and investing in advertising to give themselves a fighting chance.
In an effort to expand its $200 million business, the Levy Group has signed a licensing agreement with Esprit to produce all categories of outerwear for the sportswear company. The new line should be ready to retail for the fall 2002 season, said Donald Levy, president. Levy said the company expects to sign another “high profile” brand within the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, fall bookings for the Levy Group’s current slate of brands, including its own Donnybrook and Braetan lines, as well as licensed Liz Claiborne outerwear, is ahead 25 percent over last year, Levy said. Wool coats with fake fur trim and hooded peacoats may be the key trends for fall, he added.
With bookings even to slightly ahead of last year, Richard Madris, executive vice president of the Winlit Group, which holds the license for Ellen Tracy and Guess leather lines at the bridge and contemporary levels, respectively, said most of the store buying is done, so now the wait begins to see how the consumer reacts to the season’s offerings.
Important items for fall include longer coats in three-quarter or seven-eighths-length numbers, fake shearlings, aviator-type jackets and styles with zipout linings. In the active area, denim jackets done this season with novelty linings, will continue to be strong, he said.
In an effort to perk up its brand image, Andrew Marc has hired fur designer Guillaume Poupart, formerly of Ben Kahn, as design director. While his influence will not be felt until the spring collection, the company has been embarking on a path to make the brand hipper with a return to natural colors and earth tones, a renewed focus on skins and a bold advertising strategy, according to vice president Suzanne Schwartz.
It is expanding its offerings of skins and treatments, honing in on mixing skin and fur types, such as calf leather with a raccoon collar or a rabbit jacket with a fox collar.
Andrew Marc, which introduced a more coherent ad campaign this season, will also increase its advertising frequency by 42 percent this year in several women’s fashion magazines during the September-through-December cycle.
With a “strong increase” for fall bookings on the back of novelty fabrics such as alpaca, llama and cashmere, Cinzia Rocca will venture into advertising and has hired a public relations firm for the first time to help build name recognition, according to Denise Bongiorno, managing director for the Italian coat maker.
For the spring collection, which will be showcased in Cinzia Rocca’s newly expanded Seventh Avenue showroom by early August, men’s wear-influenced styles and fabrics will be key, such as pinstripes and double-breasted coats.
This winter will be London Fog’s first since it exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection in April, and, according to Paul Shriber, president, bookings for fall should be up 20 percent over last year, with projections for spring to increase 10 percent. As reported, in the fiscal year ended in February the company posted earnings of $2.1 million compared to a loss of $13.5 million on sales of $271.1 million the prior year. Sales fell as a result of retail consolidation, but the company returned to profitability as a result of more efficient operations.
New for the fall season is the “All-Weather Suede” fabric — a sueded polyester, machine-washable material. The fabric will also be carried into spring 2002 in pastel colors.
London Fog will continue its British-inspired advertising campaign, with a focus on trade publications and consumer magazines with a heavy trade readership.
A London Fog week will return in the fall after a hiatus of several years. Done in conjunction with a few key retailers in each market, the event will target the full breadth of the brand’s active outerwear and rainwear offerings, with a discount promotion and a grand prize giveaway.
Going into its second fall-winter season, Pacific Trail Leather’s executive vice president, Frank Spadaro, said the company is continuing to focus heavily on the best-selling fake-shearling jacket from last year.
While a variety of department stores picked up the line — a licensed offshoot of the Pacific Trail active outerwear brand — in its first season, Spadaro said he has seen even more interest from retailers this year and hopes to eventually expand it into a casual lifestyle leather brand.
As Weatherproof Garment Co. enters its sophomore season in women’s, it is planning an aggressive advertising push to capture market share.
Stollmack said the economic downturn and the decline in magazine advertising pages has helped his endeavor to blanket the media, and hopefully, increase consumer awareness. In the current market, publishers are more apt to negotiate rates and those who do invest in ads also send a message to readers, retailers and competitors that they are financially healthy, he said.
The company will spend $3.5 million to promote its women’s and men’s brands. Quilted jackets and micro-shearlings will also be important looks for fall, Stollmack noted, with fake shearling and fake suede also continuing into spring.
At Harve Benard, Bernard Holtzman, president and chief designer, said he didn’t think it would be possible to have a better season than last year, but better bookings are proving him wrong.
“So far, we have doubled our business over last year and that was a great year for outerwear,” he said, noting that spring outerwear sold well in a typically soft season for the category. “Bookings are good, so now we just have to wait and see what the weather is like.”
Outerwear for this fall and holiday season will not be as structured and tailored as last year.
Also looking forward to another profitable outerwear season is Betsy Ferraro, president of Larry Levine and the licensed Via Spiga outerwear at S. Rothschild & Co. While bookings at Larry Levine are ahead of last year, Ferraro said she is apprehensive about what the season will bring.
“But so far, the early indication is positive and stores are telling me that consumers are already purchasing coats,” she said.
As for advertising, Ferraro said the company will continue with its strategy of focusing on consumer magazines, in addition to outdoor ads at railroad stations and bus stops.
For Via Spiga outerwear’s first season at retail, Ferraro said the line mostly lived up to plan. Ferraro said she hopes the outerwear division will be just as successful as the brand’s core footwear collection and can develop as a key bridge-priced line in outerwear departments.
While there is no plan for a separate ad campaign for the outerwear, the coats will appear along with the shoes in the company’s national ad campaign this fall.