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Southern Tide Delivering Perfection One Polo at a Time w ritte n by SH E R I L BE N NE T T TURNER & photo g raphed by KRIS DECKER
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wenty-five-year-old Greenville native, Allen Stephenson, was destined to become a doctor. With his mother a former nurse, not to mention a grandfather and four generations before him doctors all, Allen was on the straight and narrow path to becoming a plastic surgeon. But sometimes in life, you come to a fork in the road where you must decide to either stay the course or choose a different path entirely. Such was the case with Allen, who decided that instead of perfecting the human body as a doctor—perfecting the dressing of the human body as a clothing designer might be just a little more interesting. “While I was attending the University of South Carolina as a pre-med student, I decided to go to Italy for a semester
shirt, complete with a logo that he envisioned one day at the beach and drew up on a napkin—the skipjack fish. Soon after, encouraged by his professor’s positive response, Allen packed up his bags, left college, and returned to his parent’s home in Greenville where he would make Southern Tide and the Skipjack Polo shirt a reality. Really, when you look at Allen’s past, it wasn’t really such a stretch that he ended up as a designer and entrepreneur. “When I was five years old,” Allen explains, “I took apart one of those old phones and then I took apart a hand-held fan and I put them together. When you turned it on, the fan would blow out the speaker. It was a rather useless machine,” he laughs, “but I always just loved taking things
to study biology,” says Allen. “I had about a twenty-minute walk to class, and on the way I’d look into the store windows where I saw all these wonderful clothes by designers like Gucci and Armani. I found that I couldn’t even pay attention in class because I was so inspired by everything around me.” What Allen learned in Italy by studying not only the couture fashions of Milan but also the timeless architecture, the stream-lined sports cars, and the people who embodied it all, was the importance of quality over quantity and that the classics never go out of style if they are updated and continually made well. Back at USC, for a business marketing class project Allen took what he had learned in Europe and presented an idea for a start-up clothing company. The imaginary company, Southern Tide, featured his interpretation of the classic polo
apart and making them better.” Allen also started a lawn mowing business when he was only fifteen. “I couldn’t drive yet, so there were only a few places I could go. However, by the time I was 17, I had four big mowers, a truck, a trailer and several weed-eaters and blowers, plus several people that worked for me. When something broke, I fixed it. I learned how to weld so I could fix the trailer.” While still in high school, Allen also completely rebuilt an old jeep, finding ways to incorporate his unique ideas into the redesign. “Later I thought to myself,” he says, “if I can build a jeep, I can certainly build a shirt.” Fast forward to the present. Since Southern Tide’s launch in the summer of 2007, it has gone from a home-based business selling to one store in South Carolina, to a market presence selling in over 200 specialty clothing stores in 17 GreerNow NOVEMBER 2008
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states, headquartered in downtown Greenville. Not a bad year. But what’s even more amazing is that Southern Tide’s success is based on one item of clothing, Allen’s original idea from college days—the perfect polo shirt. “I had a favorite polo shirt that I just loved,” Allen says. “One day I put it on to go out, and discovered it had shrunk. I then began noticing girls wearing brand-name polo shirts with another shirt underneath because, even though the polos had shrunk, they didn’t want to just throw them away.” Taking a closer look at the individual details on other polo shirts, Allen decided that he could improve on them. “As I was developing my shirt, I took five different name-brand polos and took them apart. Then I started reconstructing, taking the best of each, and combining them into one shirt.” His Frankenstein–like efforts evolved into not only a combination of the best of the best, though, but a completely new polo shirt redesigned for comfort, fit, and long-lasting wearability—the skipjack polo. “I think a lot of people think that polo shirts are just polo shirts,” Allen says. “but I engineered the shirt to be cooler and more comfortable. It starts with the yarn. That is yarn that no one had ever done before. I had to find someone to create the yarn for me with the ratios I needed. I wasn’t happy with the usual piqué that most polos are made out of, so I designed my own blend of 94% cotton and 6% elasticine, which we call True-Vent Micro Pique™. What this fabric does is allow for ease of motion and breathability. Another reason I designed polo shirts with stretch in them is, as a guy you know your shirt always comes untucked, especially when you’re playing golf. The back just creeps up. Our
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shirts move with the body so they don’t come untucked plus they don’t lose their shape and the wrinkles just fall out.” The inside of the skipjack polo is as comfortable as the outside, lined with brushed cotton that feels like a very soft, well-worn t-shirt. Other features that set this polo shirt apart—besides the embroidered fish emblem of course—are double-reinforced seams, bar-tacked herringbone taping on the side vents, crossstitched, laser engraved buttons, an enclosed placard, and a collar optimized to maintain its shape. Oh yes, and a tail. “Our polos have a longer length plus a drop tail,” Allen says. “A lot of polo shirt manufacturers have gone to a T-shirt style bottom to cut costs. I prefer the classic drop tail.” The skipjack polo comes in over 20 seasonal colors, sold in solids as well as a few stripes. Allen’s mother, Diane, is an instrumental part of color development. “My mom is unbelievable with color,” Allen admits. “She likes to use hues taken from nature because the best colors come from nature. All you have to do is walk through a field or a forest or flower shop to get inspiration.” One of the first colors offered in the line, Chianti, was inspired by Allen’s stay in Florence in the Tuscany region of Italy. Developed and named in honor of the world-renowned red wine of that area, it is also similar to the garnet color of Allen’s alma mater, and has been adopted by USC fans. Clemson supporters have their own color, Vintage Orange, which also has an interesting story behind its development. “The official Clemson bright orange color is hard for most people to wear,” explains Allen. “I had a friend who had a Clemson T-shirt that was about
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9-years-old. It had been washed so much that it was a faded, muted orange. That’s where I got the vintage orange color. It’s still the official orange, but much easier to wear against the skin color.” Recently Allen partnered with Jim Twining, who as chief executive officer for Southern Tide brings invaluable prior experience in marketing, operations, and finance to the mix. “A friend of mine asked me to sit down with Allen and help him with his business plan,” Jim says. “The process takes some time, about two months, and after Allen and I got to know each other, he said to me, ‘We want you to do this with us.’” Since February of this year, Jim has been involved in helping the rapidly growing company meet the demands of their fans. “What Allen did was nothing short of remarkable,” Jim says. “This business is very complicated—everything from the fabric to the color to the size; to buttons to the thread to the labels; forecasting demand to the freight to the customs— there are so many moving parts. What they were able to do during 2007 was extraordinary. Since then what we’ve done is just build infrastructure to make the company more scalable in response to the ever growing demand for the Skipjack Polo. At the same time, we have been designing and testing new products for our customers.” One of Allen and Jim’s main concerns is that as the company grows, it maintains the quality that makes Southern Tide unique. “Most consumers tell us they buy our shirt because it feels better, fits better, and it looks better,” Allen says. “I’ve always been frustrated in some name-brand companies who made a great product in years gone by. Then their distribution becomes huge, and I grab one of those products today and it’s just not the same thing. It’s like they had accountants go over it and say if you take this out you’ll make more money. Our philosophy is different. Every day we try to make it even better. We might not make as much money when we sell them, but we’re going to have customers who for years will be buying our products, and that’s what we want.” Jim agrees. “I have four sons between the ages of 18 and 22. When I first started working with Allen, I took some of his shirts home with me and gave one to my son who’s still in high school and asked him to go try it on. Keep in mind, this is a household that has at least 100 polo-style shirts hanging in the closets. So he walked in and said, ‘I’ll tell you what, if you get me some more of these, I’ll never wear another brand of polo shirt’. That’s when I knew what Allen had done was amazing. We have several sayings that we use internally at Southern Tide, one of these is, ‘We’ll never sacrifice quality to make a buck.’ We’re a young company, but we plan to always remain true to our customers.” Due to overwhelming demand, Southern Tide began
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making polo shirts for women this year, which like the men’s skipjack polos are also flying off the shelves. So, what’s next for the Southern Tide label? Breaking the mold with other classics like oxford shirts, khaki pants, and perhaps even children’s clothing and jeans. “We probably get an email a week asking, ‘How did you make your first shirt? How do you do it? I want to make one.’ I think a lot of people think that Allen just found a shirt one day and put a fish on it,” Jim laughs. “He didn’t. He engineered the skipjack polo from the yarn up. Allen is very visually aware. He called me two or three months after we got together and said, ‘Hey, I woke up early this morning and designed our whole new khaki line.’ He can look and see shapes and images and remember visual things very clearly. That’s one of his gifts.” “When you’re trying to develop something that’s never been done, it’s extremely hard to put a process in place,” Allen says. “There are all these technological advances now plus expectations are higher. We want to bring the customer a new level of performance and comfort with every item that we develop.” “What it boils down to,” Jim says, “is that we make exceptional, authentic, classic clothing. In other words, we want to take something that’s classic, that is timeless (won’t go out of style), and make it better. That’s why we market our clothes through independent men’s and women’s specialty stores where quality is the focus.” Allen agrees. “It used to be in past generations, that sons went with their dads to the local men’s clothing store on Saturdays. Nowadays, the younger generation might shop in a department store just to get dressed. One of the things that we want to do with our clothes is get young people interested again in shopping at fine specialty clothing stores because they are the real deal. They know good quality clothes, they are experts in fit, and they’ll do your tailoring.” With a growth rate of almost 800% this year, Southern Tide seems to be doing everything right to position itself for future success. One of the company’s major goals, Allen says, is to continue giving customers value for their money. “When a customer spends their hard-earned money on our shirt, they’re going to get a product that’s worth it, that lasts. It’s the principle. We want each customer to put on our shirt and to enjoy the experience. We want them to go out somewhere and someone say, ‘Wow! Nice shirt.’” d For more information on Southern Tide, please visit their website at www.southerntide.com. The Southern Tide label can be found locally at Smith & James and at Chelsea’s Ladies Apparel & Accessories in Greer Station.