15 Jul 2010, Posted by admin in Fashion, 0 Comments

menswear corner: company of we

Eight days. That is the amount of time if took for Christopher Crawford and Jayzel Samonte’s debut menswear collection to sell out. There was no fancy presentation, no flashy ad campaign–just the website CompanyofWe.com and impeccably designed clothes. Company of We, launched by Crawford and Samonte in the midst of the recession in 2009, struck a nerve with men worldwide with edgy designs, high quality fabrics and an affordable price point. The line was initially sold solely online, but has since been stocked in high-end boutiques ranging from Saks Fifth Avenue, to New York City’s Odin to Japanese department store United Arrows. Company of We runs the gamut of menswear—offering everything from basic tees to structured double breasted blazers, with a focus on fabric and fit. I caught up with Crawford and Samonte, not only business partners but also boyfriends, to get their thoughts on their path to success, their design process and what rising star designers need to know to succeed.

Nikhil Khosla: Christopher, coming from a women’s fashion background with Christopher Deane and Jayzel coming from an advertising and consumer goods background–how did you decide to launch a menswear line?

Jayzel Samonte: We didn’t even really intend to do so. I was having a bad day. Christopher and I were at Bergdorf Goodman and I bought a pair of Michael Bastian shorts (one of my favorite designers). I didn’t even look at the price tag because I knew I would feel even worse. When we left, we checked the tag and felt really conflicted. I barely wanted to sit in the shorts lest I ruin them in any way. Granted there are clothes every designer makes that are worth the production, but we realized that there is a huge gap in a man’s closet. You have these luxury pieces from Dries [van Noten], Lanvin and then stuff from Uniqlo—that is if you have patience to wait thirty minutes in line to check out. When Chris and I moved in together the concept took shape and we decided to go for it.

Christopher Crawford: Jay was always asking me to make clothes for him that actually fit. Why do you need to pay so much for fit [he would ask me]? We realized that we could offer the design, fit and quality for a price that the average guy could afford.

NK: Where did the idea for the concept “Company of We” come from?

JS: It actually started off as an inside joke!

CC: Well, we started off very Un Company of We. We have a pretty different groups of friends, so when we started dating we had to orchestrate different events to accommodate people. Whenever I would drag Jayzel across to one of my friends’ events, he would say, ‘Ok I’ll do it for you, company of we, Chris, company of we.’ When we started talking about launching a line, we thought, it’s the two of us, Company of We!

JS: The concept also serves as a vehicle for the core of our brand–democratic luxury. It conveys the idea that we’re designing for our audience, and that it’s accessible. The way Chris and I work is also a democratic process–we’ve spent pretty much every minute of the last two years together (apart perhaps for 72 hours in total), and it’s the juxtaposition and combination of our personalities that makes this work.

NK: How has working as a team shaped the brand?

JS: Chris is very type A and driven and I’m very West Coast. I’m also very picky, whatever I choose needs to be exactly right. The juxtaposition of our sensibilities is what really defines and gives direction to the aesthetic of the line. Chris is into the ornate, interested in history and flea markets, whereas I like cleaner lines. I want something that has never been used, I want to put my own history on it. The interaction of our two styles is what created Company of We and keeps us generating new ideas. The great thing is that we’re constantly learning from one another. I learn something about the fashion industry on a daily basis from Chris, and I provide Chris with new perspective and spark.

CC: Having been in the industry for a while, I felt pretty jaded. Jay pushes me to be aspirational, to make pieces that continuously push the brand forward and to not fall into the trap of being just a business with no heart.

NK: Who is your target customer, and how do you position Company of We in the menswear landscape?

CC: We have a pretty broad appeal. Our consumer is the guy who graduated college, shops at places like Urban Outfitters and wants edgy designs that won’t fall apart. The cut is very narrow, so it still appeals to that client who might shop at Dior but doesn’t want to pay a bucket. I think someone once described our brand as “Bergan Outdorfers.”

JS: When you go to the mass-market stores, you lose a lot of the things you get at the luxury price point. I’ve always been forced to spend more just because things don’t fit me. We want things to fit what we believe is true to size. I fit a small, but if I go to pretty much any mall chain, I feel like I’m in a large. I shouldn’t have to pay that much extra just for well fitting clothes. You also lose a lot of the romance and personality when you shop at those kinds of places. We’re offering the fit, design and quality of luxury brands at mass market prices.

NK: Your first collection sold out in eight days–with no marketing campaign–and you launched in the midst of a recession which was risky to say the least. What do you think makes Company of We successful?

JS: Firstly we live in the old Chase building right off Wall Street, the epicenter of the first recession. Our families live in Florida and Las Vegas and were hit hard by the recession (our parents actually compete over who has been hit harder). In short, we were definitely aware when starting off that this would be tough, but I think what really worked was that we approached the collection from a consumer point of view, not from a designer point of view. We could always put together a piece of clothing for more if cost were no object, but in this environment, people want that same design for way less and that’s what we aim to provide. Our success is also testament to the American dream–it’s still alive and kicking and people are still consuming.

NK: Can you share the process you go through when designing a new collection?

JS: Its a very collaborative process between the two of us. We come up with the overall aesthetic and fabrics together. We’re very competitive and we make the process fun that way. We create little challenges for ourselves to individually come up with new concepts. We do around 50% of the designs together, and then come up with the rest individually. We then share our individual ideas and go through an editing and selection process to decide what is included in the line with varying levels of objections. Once the designs are set, I do the show and Chris does the production.

NK: You decided to start off online only–what was the rationale behind that decision?

JS: A couple of things spurred the online distribution. When we started off, we had to take stock of what we had available–limited capital, our combined skill set and limited time (we still had day jobs). Furthermore we noticed that the use of the internet as a channel for shopping had been growing massively in the US to levels comparable to countries such as Japan. At noon everyday at my last job, everyone, including myself, would run online to Gilt [Groupe] to check out the sales. Distributing online gave us direct access to our customers and was easier to manage than wholesale.

CC: When we decided to build our site, we literally knew nothing about web design. We actually went out and bought HTML for Dummies. One of the advantages people often don’t think of when considering the Internet as a channel is the ability to get direct feedback from your customers. Customers can directly comment on your designs. This reinforces popular designs and quickly tells you when something isn’t working.

NK: Company of We is now stocked in numerous high end boutiques from Saks and Oak in New York all the way to United Arrows in Japan to name but a few. What spurred the move to wholesale?

CC: United Arrows was actually the first to pick up our line. After the first wave of publicity went out, we got calls from numerous retailers. My position initially was–I’ve done wholesale, it’s a tough business, the online model is doing fantastically well with great margins, why would we change. I’ve been in the women’s market for a while and its really tough dealing with wholesalers and getting the right stores interested. We’ve obviously been able to hit a nerve with Company of We, since all the right stores have been coming to us. Now that I look back, in order to grow quickly going wholesale was definitely the right move.

JS: We were earning a good income, but not enough to quit my job. So while men’s fashion week was happening, we met with a couple of buyers for stores in Japan–they wanted us to show them a spring collection in two weeks time. It was a crazy push but we did it. They saw the collection and they loved it. When we got those accounts we thought, why stop now?

NK: Your spring ’10 campaign almost has a religious feel to it, a nod to the occult, what inspired the concept?

CC: We want to incorporate the idea of “We” in all our campaigns and are constantly brainstorming on how to reinterpret the concept. For the spring campaign we were inspired by the current economic environment. In the midst of the recession and failure, people are looking to believe in something to guide them through. We took that idea and focused on groups of people looking towards symbols of belief, with perhaps a hint of religious symbolism, but we leave that open to interpretation.

NK: The women’s market is pretty saturated at this point, do you think there are still gaps and opportunities in the menswear market?

CC: Yes. The difference between women and men is that women want something new all the time whereas men want pretty much the same thing, with a new detail. You need to introduce fashion to them one element at a time and then eventually, perhaps 20 years down the line, you end up with some new categories. There is still a lot of movement in the menswear market.

JS: There is definitely room for innovation. We put together a sleeveless t-shirt with shoulder pads and 60% sold out within the first week. Men are definitely looking at new shapes and new definitions of accessibility are emerging.

NK: Is there anything you wish you had known when you first launched your clothing line?

JS: Well luckily I had Chris starting off, and he was in the business already, so we definitely had a head start. When you’re young and starting off in the business, there are so many obstacles you face. Money is only one of the obstacles, and often not even the biggest one–where do you source your fabrics, whom can you trust to actually deliver your product. You just have to take the risks and put in the time and effort even if you can’t see where exactly you’re going to end up.

You also have to have a critical eye and good business sense to be able to balance what you ideally ‘want’ in your design versus what makes business and economic sense. For example I wanted a specific type of button for a jacket in the line. Chris had to stop me because it just didn’t make economic sense.

NK: What advice do you have for an aspiring designer or entrepreneur looking to launch his or her line?

CC: Starting or designing a line and a fashion brand is a hobby. Selling the line to stores is a business. If you’re a designer and don’t have any business sense, find somebody who does and learn from them. You won’t have anything successful if you don’t figure out how to run the actual business. Talent alone isn’t enough. The truth is there are a million talented designers out there, more talented than Jayzel and myself. They, however, do not have successful businesses often because they haven’t taken the time to learn the operations.

JS: Success, honestly sometimes it’s a lottery. Part of it is being in the right time and right place, but you need to have the resilience to stick through the ups and down, and there will be a lot of both. Stop just thinking of design. Design is around 5% of the job. A lot of designers think it’s a glamorous job where they can sit around all day coming up with ideas and brainstorming, whereas the reality is that that is probably what you spend the least time on. Fashion is not a glamorous business. We’re doing 38 different styles per shipment and 10 shipments a year. It’s a lot of work.

NK: What are you currently working on?

JS: Currently we’re designing the new collection, working on concepts, getting samples back and tweaking which is all a lot of fun. But for every one of those days, there are 20 days spent doing other tasks such as talking to publicists, managing accounts, finding new stores, marketing the new campaign, negotiating prices–the list goes on and on, we’re always busy.

–Nikhil Khosla