Even so, the idea of creating a nautical-themed apparel brand was the furthest thing from his mind growing up. In fact, Chu, who was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the U. But I took an illustration class one summer and found myself in fashion design. Chu returned to the States and joined Kayser-Roth for five years. It resonated with a lot of people. And we were also selling to a few hundred really good specialty stores.
Nautica in-store shops were installed at department stores around the country and the brand sponsored sailing competitions and opened a fancy showroom on 57th Street in New York.
In , VF Corp. So I moved on. Life is a series of different adventures. Products including Nautica Golf, fragrances, neckware, footwear, watches, hosiery, eyewear, rainwear, leather belts, wallets, gloves, scarves, and home furnishings are also licensed across the globe in over 20 countries. The majority of Nautica's sales stem from operations in its top two markets--the United States and Europe.
Nautica originated in as Pacific Coast Knitting Mills, a firm engaged in manufacturing and distributing double-knit natural and synthetic fabrics in Vernon, California. Van Baalen, which originated in in New York, had moved to Maine in the late s to lower its labor costs. At the time of its purchase it was making robes under the Christian Dior name and had long-term contracts with designers John Weitz and Pierre Cardin.
It was renamed Van Baalen Pacific Corp. Its stock quickly fell out of favor with investors, dropping as low as 12 cents a share in and two cents a share in Flaster's wife, who owned the biggest block of Pacific Coast stock, and Myron Herschler, its vice-president and another big investor, sold their shares to Harvey Sanders, the company's chairman, secretary, and treasurer, and Milton Weinick, a director.
Sanders and Weinick were partners in a New York City accounting firm that bore their names. Sanders emerged with 41 percent of the stock, and Weinick, named vice-president and treasurer, with 31 percent. In , Weinick became chairman as well as treasurer, with Sanders as vice-president and secretary. Sanders's rank rose to president in , and he added the title of chief executive officer in State-O-Maine made modest profits in the late s but was still shunned by investors.
Customers for its robes and jogging suits included Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, and Saks. The firm's fortunes advanced that year when a department-store executive introduced Sanders to David Chu, a young, Taiwanese-born clothing designer. Chu and a partner had started a company called Nautica in and had introduced a collection of brightly colored men's outdoor jackets.
They sold well, but the partner did not want to invest the necessary funds for expansion. Chu later traded his 20 percent interest in the company for State-O-Maine stock. Sanders and Chu devised an expansion plan combining Nautica's products and maritime-based image with State-O-Maine's production and distribution network.
This plan entailed selling only to carefully selected high-end stores--only one or two department stores in each market outside New York City--and showcasing Nautica's products as a collection rather than splitting them by categories.
These products grew to include men's dress shirts, neckwear, hosiery, belts, suspenders, small leather goods, jewelry, watches, gloves, hats, sunglasses, fragrances, and skin care. Outerwear accounted for about 45 percent, "activewear" for another 40 percent, and casual sportswear, a line introduced in , for 15 percent.
A full collection of women's products was introduced in fall Fueled by Nautica's popularity, State-O-Maine became a hot company in the late s. At first about half the company's production was manufactured in Rockland, but this proportion fell to one-third as Nautica established a Hong Kong subsidiary and increasingly outsourced its needs to Far East suppliers. In , State-O-Maine halted production at its Van Baalen subsidiary, restricting the operation to distribution and importing all of its clothing.
He maintained total command over the Nautica image, with design control over every style in both the men's and women's clothing lines--now totaling nearly pieces--and also over the licensed products, such as watches and fragrances. He even designed many of Nautica's fabrics. In an interview for a cover story for Bobbin , Chu said the Nautica image represented the "relationship of people to nature.
What we try to do is provide functional apparel that is stylish--apparel that can be worn in all kinds of weather and all kinds of nature patterns. The beauty about the textile industry today is the new technologies featuring new fabrics, waterproof fabrics, and microfibers, which make the final product more functional.
By the spring of , Nautica had established nearly in-store shops, with distinctive deck flooring in certain areas. Its high-end image was fiercely protected by Sanders; when a department store marked down its goods mid-season, the account was dropped.
Nautica's carefully crafted marketing plan included advertisements in such magazines as GQ , Esquire , Sports Illustrated , Vanity Fair , and Vogue , and also sponsorship of sailing competitions, including the United States and international Youth Sailing Championships.
For , it created its very own championship in Portugal: the Nautica Cup. That year State-O-Maine opened an expensive new showroom on Manhattan's elegant 57th Street and hired 10 additional designers and merchandising coordinators. However, Nautica's money-losing women's division, which never accounted for more than 15 percent of sales, was discontinued in May State-O-Maine added another arrow to its quiver in , when it acquired Bayou Sport for an undisclosed sum. The line includes casual and business attire, as well as bathing suits, with a nautical feel to all of it.
The company now is owned by a major corporation. The Nautica brand was created in by David Chu. Chu had immigrated to the United States from Taiwan with his family in the s. He grew up on the East Coast, and later returned to Taipei, Taiwan, for a spell. Chu studied architecture at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, where he also took a design class. The Nautica company got off to a fast start, growing exponentially in its first few years of operation.
He remained on as CEO for about a year. Nautica was founded after Chu began successfully selling coats designed to look like sailor's coats to upscale stores around New York.
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