A decade ago, mid-priced brands like Liz Claiborne, and Jones Apparel Group's Sag Harbor, dominated fashion. Now, it's about luxury & designer labels for less.
Not that long ago, mid-priced moderate brands sold by Liz Claiborne Inc., Jones Apparel Group, and Kellwood Co. dominated the department sales floors. And today? Not only is the market for luxury goods where the money is, but high design has hit mass market prices with A-list designers like Isaac Mizrahi (Target), Vera Wang (Kohl’s), Mark Eisen (Wal-mart), and Stella McCartney (H&M).
In stark contrast, VF Corp. has acquired a dynamic portfolio of fashion & lifestyle brands, propelling it to become the largest apparel company in the U.S., with sales of $6.5 billion a year.
According to a recent piece in WWD, the primary shifts in the industry are as follows:
LESS DISTRIBUTION As the number of department stores has shrunk, so has the size of the distribution channel to shoppers – which has reduced the number of retail clients.
PRIVATE LABEL In-house lines such as INC and O by Oscar de la Renta have grown to the point where customers come will specifically seek them out. "To be a profitable business you have to do something for your retail customer that they can't do for themselves," Emanuel Weintraub of Emanuel Weintraub consulting firm, about these destination brands. "What is it that moderate can do for the retailer that they can't do for themselves? The answer is increasingly less and less."
HIGH DESIGN FOR LESS Shopping high & low – seemingly without discrimination – fashion consumers are happy to spend their money at mass discounters like Wal-Mart, Target, and H&M where they can find incredibly affordable designs from fashion cult faves such as Karl Lagerfeld, Roland Mouret, Behnaz Sarafpour, Luella Bartley, and Viktor & Rolf. (via WWD)
