COOL NE W S
Superdry It seems that ever since David Beckham was paparazzied wearing a Superdry jacket the upstart UK label has been on a roll. That was three years ago, when Superdry “had about 15 stores and was hardly a global brand.” Today it has 75 stores worldwide and “plans to add at least 20 more stores every year and expand in the United States, Asia and the Middle East.” The larger story is a niche focus on “casual fashion for young men. Superdry features good quality fabrics, vintage designs, an eye-catching logo and painstaking attention to detail.” The idea, according to co-founder Julian Dunkerton, was to create vintage-style clothes but with a contemporary fit. Superdry is also doing well because landlords are handing “over retailing space to the company for nearly nothing because Superdry stores helped attract customers,” making the stores “profitable almost immediately after opening.” (Imagine that: Your store is so cool that you don’t have to pay rent!). Superdry also has “a price advantage — polo shirts cost $52, compared with about $90 at Abercrombie.” Last but not least there’s the intriguing name, which Julian and co-founder James Holder created after noticing the preponderance of Japanese product packages with the word “super” on them. The Superdry logo is rendered in both English and Japanese. [S o u r c e : Julia Werdigier, The New York Times, 5/14/10]
Da Bakery A silk-screen shop in da Bronx is making a business out of matching tees, hoodies and hats with the latest footwear designs. The thing about the latest sneaks is that they often feature “offbeat colors like cranberry and copper” that just don’t go with off-the-rack apparel. Da Bakery, co-founded by Anthony Cabezas and Sandro Figueroa, tracks which shoes are about to hit the street via sites like sneakerfiles dot-com, and creates matching items. “You won’t see any of their styles in any store,” says Ray Ruiz, a customer. “They always know what people want.” The store’s name refers to Sandro’s boyhood ambition to open a bakery. “It’s like baking cookies,” suggests Anthony. “Or pizzas.” Each design is limited “to editions of 36 shirts, which sell for $25 to $50 apiece.” They sell about 100 tees per week. “We are constantly releasing new product,” says Anthony. “When you go to Fordham, Southern or Third, you see the same stuff on all the racks. We got our own designs.” Da Bakery has been open for nearly a year now, and Anthony and Sandro “are thinking of expanding into other boroughs and perhaps stocking sneakers.” [S o u r c e : David Gonzalez, The New York Times, 5/16/10]
Tomorrow Shoes Blake Mycoskie of Toms Shoes fame says he never intended to wrap his brand equity in a charity. “I wasn’t out to do good,” he says. He was just bouncing around Buenos Aires, hankering after cheap polo lessons, when “he met wealthy urbanites who were donating used shoes in local villages.” As Blake explains: “It just hit me ... Instead of a charity with handouts, why not create a company where that’s the whole purpose? I thought, you buy one pair of shoes today so we can give one tomorrow.” Over the past four years, Toms Shoes “has given away 600,000 pairs of shoes ... selling their counterparts at roughly $55 each.” That works out to about $33 million in shoes. In April, he ran a promotion that challenged “people to go barefoot and feel what it’s like to be among the world’s shoeless.” While this appeared to be a one-off promotion, Toms does go “a step further than most in blurring the difference between brand and charity; the brand doesn’t exist outside the charitable work. Its success shows that good works can be a powerful profit engine.” Says Blake: “When you incorporate giving into your model, we’re proving it to be good for business.” [S o u r c e : Christina Binkley, The Wall Street Journal, 4/1/10]
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