Denim comeback - men's clothing retail

Discount Store News, Jan 21, 1991

Denim comeback

By loosening the fit and experimenting with fabric finishes and weights, suppliers and retailers are managing to kick denim back into high gear.

Nineteen ninety-one could be the year of the comeback. In tennis, John McEnroe is showing a little of his old style on the court. George Foreman is back in the ring. Even former New York Jet Mark Gastineau is trying to bring his formidable defensive skills back to the gridiron.

In apparel, denim, a classification that over the years has been one of the staunchest competitors for consumer dollars, appears to be pulling itself up from the slide it has taken over the last several seasons.

Men's denim, which lost ground during the late 1980s to an influx of casual, relaxed-fit trousers, is growing in retail importance as silhouettes, fabric finishes and marketing plans are being teamed together on both the manufacturing and store levels.

Given the current apparel bust, only blind-eyed optimists would predict huge increases for any clothing category, so even the small sales blip that men's jeans is producing can be construed as encouraging. After a 4 percent loss in unit sales from 1987 through 1989, purchases of men's denim increased 2 percent for the September '89 through September '90 period, according to the KSA/NPD purchase panel.

Credit for this forward movement must be given to the aggressive tactics taken by manufacturers and merchants.

Rose's, the Henderson, N.C.-based discounter, for example, has attacked denim with an all-out barrage of open-to-buy dollars. From back-to-school 1990 through the present, the company has doubled its commitment to the category.

"Corporately we decided that we were going to be the headquarters store for denim in the Southeast," says Divisional Merchandise Manager Horace Marshburn. Considering Rose's consumer base, this strategy makes perfect sense. "It is really a customer service. Our customer lives in denim. He works, plays, and sometimes even goes to church in denim," Marshburn explains.

To this end, buyers at the store assorted their shelves with a plethora of labels, including Lee, Wrangler, Rustler, Brittania, Bonjour, Sasson, H.I.S., Gitano, Manhattan, and Long Haul.

Matt Moorfoot, senior buyer at the Troy, Mich. juggernaut Kmart, is also bullish on the subject of men's denim, despite sales results that are only "fairly flat.

"For the past seven or eight months we've been in the process of going to EDI [electronic data interchange], and we had some glitches on the way up. Inventories at the store level ended up being not as accurate as we might have hoped. Had it not been for some of these systems problems, I'm confident we would have shown some increases," says Moorfoot. In addition to private label jeans--Power Blues generates 15 percent to 20 percent of sales--Kmart's men's jeans mix includes several national brands, such as Wrangler, Rustler, Brittania, and Jordache.

As might be expected, a number of manufacturers, particularly those that have recently entered or re-focused their businesses at the mass merchant level, are also enthusiastic.

"The fourth quarter was really good. We've been chasing business since October," reports Angello LaGrega, vice president, general manager of Wrangler America, who says his division's sales were up 24 percent in 1990 compared to 1989.

These results were spurred by Wrangler's American Hero models, which were introduced to the market three years ago.

Another relatively recent mass market player, Brittania, the Levi Strauss & Co. division, is still logging steep increases, although its men's business may begin to slow down in the near future.

"We've been selling to the mass market for three years, concentrating our efforts on men's. I think we're still on a sharp growth curve, but it will probably level off after this year at a nice plateau," says Jim Chriss, Brittania's vice president of marketing.

"Next year we'll certainly try to continue to grow, but much of that will be through women's," Chriss adds.

While sales increases obviously vary on an individual company basis, the driving silhouette behind across-the-board sales is consistent. Five-pocket models are largely riding herd on the business.

However, a more relaxed fit is beginning to take hold. Even manufacturers such as Lee, which is limiting SKUs by offering mostly basic styles with fashion finishes, have brought looser-fitting models into their lines "as a defense against relaxed-fit casual pants," says the firm's vice president of marketing, Joseph Pacifico.

Another silhouette that's making inroads is a beach pant derivative. This pull-on, semi-active model is currently in Kmart selling for $22 in both private and national label programs.

While non-traditional cuts are available in the market, most manufacturers prefer to produce a fashion aesthetic through fabric variations. Spencer Industries, the McGregor bottoms licensee, for instance, is offering numerous textures, fancies, washes and prints, according to Liz Dowdle, vice president of merchandising.