Outward Bound - WWD.com

4 WWD thursday, march 31, 2011 Men’s Week
Reinventing HMX
by JEAN E. PALMIERI
ThE sEA of sleeves in traditional tailored
clothing departments is a yawn and needs to
be revamped to appeal to today’s shopper.
“We need to make tailored clothing departments
more interesting,” said Joseph Abboud,
president and chief creative officer of the hMX
Group. “Men are the new women,” and are now
more interested than ever in looking good.
This presents an opportunity for the men’s
wear industry, but only if they’re prepared to
“shake things up,” he said.
That’s exactly what he did to the product offerings
at the former hartmarx Corp. when he came
on board at the beginning of 2010. “We’re breaking
the rules in a sexy, intelligent and masculine way.”
Abboud and Doug Williams, chief executive officer
of hMX, were the opening speakers at the
Men’s Wear Industry CEo summit at the Mandarin
oriental hotel in New York on Tuesday. They told
the tale of how they rebuilt the shattered shell of
the hartmarx business after being brought in by
the company’s new majority owners, s. Kumars
Nationwide Ltd. (sKNL), a publicly held Indian
company.
When Williams walked into the company in
september of 2009, he found that there were fewer
than $20 million in orders in hand. Retailers had
walked away from the business because they were
not convinced that the company could deliver because
of its financial problems and subsequent
bankruptcy filing. At the same time, the design of
the labels had suffered and the “product did not
have relevance to consumers,” he said.
his first order of business was to convince
retailers that the newly formed hMX, which
had acquired only the assets of the business,
would deliver on time. he also worked to lift
the spirits of employees, who were terrified
they would lose their jobs.
Williams, who was raised on a farm in south
Dakota, said most of the employees were like
prairie dogs, hiding in their holes and expecting
the worst. “We encouraged them to come out,” he said.
he quickly evaluated the product and realized that a
major revamp was in order. Realizing that his strength is
as “a business engineer” and not a merchant, he searched
the market for “the best talent” and hired Abboud. Both
Williams and Abboud had cut their teeth at Polo Ralph
Lauren and learned firsthand about how to “build great
product and execute it. That philosophy was drilled into us
by Ralph Lauren himself,” Williams said.
Both men believe that brands “have to have consistent
DNA” in order to make a statement to retailers and on the
Fairchild’s Men’s W
“There’s nothing that
we make that anyone
has to buy.”
— dOug WilliaMS, HMX
sales floors. Williams likened it to “establishing goal posts,”
where the company would use the past for inspiration but
strive to create a modern offering.
The jewels in the hMX crown include hart schaffner Marx,
which is 120 years old, hickey freeman, which is 100, and
Coppley, a Canadian label with 107 years of history. But despite
their longevity, Williams said, the brands “had no relevance.”
This represented “a great opportunity and challenge,”
Abboud said.
one of the firm’s strengths that could be exploited, they
said, was the fact that their tailored clothing was produced
Joseph Abboud and
Doug Williams
in company-owned factories in the U.s. and
Canada. “As a an American designer,” Abboud
said, it’s invaluable to be able to produce a
quality garment in the U.s. Today, hMX makes
more than 500,000 suits at its facilities, which
retail from $795 to $3,000.
But the design needed a major overhaul.
“The first thing I saw was that the silhouette
and fabrics looked backward,” he said. “That’s
not where the market should go. We should
take the lead. We needed creative discipline.”
And so he created a leaner silhouette, softened
up the construction of the suits, turned to
more relevant fabrics and added complementary
casualwear offerings by creating “a bridge
from tailored clothing to sportswear.” he said
he sometimes pushed the envelope, offering
nine different madras patterns instead of just
three, for example, but the depth of the collection
provided retailers with more options and
showed the company’s commitment to product.
Abboud also created distinct collections for
different seasons. “The thought of seasonal collections
is so important in men’s wear,” he said.
“Why take the options away from our customers.”
Moves like this show that hMX is “not burdened
down by the way things used to be,”
Abboud said.
he has the full support of Williams. “Too
often the business side says to consolidate,
and that stymies the creative process,” he
said. Abboud added: “Creativity drives profit.”
To help drive that profit, Williams turned to the
back office to search for savings. shortly after
joining, he closed the company’s “dusty” headquarters
in Chicago and consolidated the five
New York City offices under one roof on 42nd
street. With everyone in one place, he then set
out to “establish a culture of excellence.”
Williams visited all of the company’s 1,700
employees and assured them that the new management
team was committed to keeping the
company in business. With the employees now
firmly in his corner and Abboud in charge of the
product, hMX was on solid footing once again.
“There’s nothing that we make that anyone has
to buy,” Williams said. “so we have to evoke emotion
and make people want to be part of the club we have.”
Responding to questions from the audience, Williams
said that although hickey freeman operates four stores,
these are viewed mainly as “laboratories” to test new offerings
and should not be viewed as competitors to the company’s
retail accounts. And asked about the Palm Beach label,
which also has a rich history, Williams said the company
shut it down but plans to reintroduce it as a luxury collection
focusing on its strength in such staples as seersucker
and khaki. “It’s a great name and a global opportunity,”
Abboud said.
Josh Rosen
Saturdays Surf
Carves Stylish
Niche in Surf
Retailing
by DAvID LIPKE
oPENING A sMALL surf shop
on a cobblestoned street in New
York’s soho neighborhood in
the midst of a recession may not
sound like the most sure-fire
business proposition. But since
its debut on Crosby street in 2009,
saturdays surf has created a stylish
niche for itself in an industry
dominated by big players like
Quiksilver, Billabong and volcom.
“It’s a weird thing, I admit
it,” said Josh Rosen, who opened
the shop with partners Morgan
Collett and Colin Tunstall following
a stint as a showroom
rep for brands like Nudie and
J. Lindeberg. “But we thought
there was this missing piece of
the puzzle in the surf industry. We live and
we breathe surfing, spend countless hours
going back and forth between the city and the
beach, and we didn’t have a surf shop that we
could call home. We also didn’t wear surf apparel
brands — we identified more with New
York brands, with a more modern feel.”
The shop sells surf boards and gear, wet
suits from Patagonia and accessories from
Dakine, as well as fashion items like Levi’s
vintage Clothing jeans and Gitman shirts.
There’s a saturdays surf line that started
with T-shirts but has expanded to woven
shirts, chinos, shorts, sweatshirts, pullovers
and outerwear — as well as collaborations
with companies like bag maker Porter and
grooming brand Baxter of California.
After opening the brick-and-motor
shop, Rosen and his partners leveraged the
Internet and social media to build the business
beyond those four walls. The company
operates a blog, facebook page, Twitter account,
videos on YouTube and a just-launched
e-commerce site to burnish the brand and
grow sales. one video of Collett making his
way to Rockaway Beach from the shop, via
skateboard and subway, has garnered more
than 400,000 views.
“It can be deceiving when you walk into
our shop on a rainy Monday morning and
there’s nobody in the store,” said Rosen. “It’s
what you don’t see, it’s what’s in the back —
on the blog and Web site — that’s really allowing
us to take this business to the next level.”
The foundation for the business, however,
remains the original soho store, stressed
Rosen. “None of this would have come if it
weren’t for the shop. The Web would not be
successful without the store. People have
to come in and touch and feel. A lot of the
original content for the Web comes out of the
store,” he explained.
The store has become a hub for surf fans
and hipsters in general to congregate and
hang out, thanks to a coffee bar and a backyard
that are part of the space. “The coffee
shop in front is a way to invite people into
our world. We have people who come in the
middle of the day and we see them until we
close,” related Rosen.
Up next for the company is its first shopin-shop,
which will open in two weeks inside
the Adam and Rope department store in
Tokyo. “Japan makes sense because they love
culture and New York,” said Rosen, adding
another pop-up shop will likely open on Long
Island when the AsP World Tour comes to
Long Beach in september.
photos by thomas iannaccone