A buddy of mine suggested that we invest in a franchise of a store, Bachrach, which was our favorite place to buy our clothes. I’d shopped there with my mom since I was 16.
Interestingly, Ed Bacharach, the third Generation family owner of the business had just decided to try to grow the store concept but franchising wasn’t the way he was planning on doing it.
So, to make an 8-year long story short, I made a leap from software to mens clothing. They made me learn the business from the ground up by starting work in their Chicago stores. It was the epitome of white glove sales and hands on customer service. I got discounts on great clothes and before too long I saw a new business opportunity.
It took less than a year of off-the-charts sales in my Chicago store for Ed to give me an opportunity to come to work at corporate.
Applying my design and marketing skills with first hand understanding of our customer, it seemed to me that the key to continued growth was not reselling other brands but building our own. And I knew just where to start.
I took over the pants program, and drove hundreds of thousands of unit sales. The results gave me the confidence, and reputation, to work with manufacturers to design pants, and eventually develop a line, and then an entire store and catalog. I kept coming up with new ideas and pushing for more innovation. At one point Ed told me “I’m not going to remove the Bachrach sign from the side of the building and replace it with Crain.” But that was ok, I already had an idea for my next company.
Notably, one of my programs that was the most successful was a line of private label microfiber pants. It was kind of funny because before it was called microfiber it was just a polyester pant and that was kind of the going the wrong way as far as men’s fashion was concerned. About that time the hottest thing in retail was the Gap and they had just reinvented cotton khaki pants, t-shirts, and polo shirts.
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Gap had just reinvented cotton pants but I thought I saw an opportunity with the performance qualities of synthetics. Particularly for sports.
The success of the microfiber pants program at Bachrach allowed me to develop a good relationship with DuPont. I wanted to do something outside of Bachrach that was not competitive, so I started talking to them about what was next.
When they took me into the DuPont labs and showed me what was to become the basis of performance fabrics we know today I immediately thought of an application for it in the burgeoning golf apparel industry. At a molecular level, they were creating wrinkle and water resistant fibers. They were literally coating fibers with Teflon.
Other players, whether it was Gap or Dockers, were making cotton pants then applying a coating to the entire garment. While it had some performance qualities, the effect wasn’t long-lasting and It was hard and stiff. When Teflon was applied to the fiber, it was a whole different ballgame. So now you had this lighter weight garment, it’s softer, almost silky feeling, drapes nicely, and when you wash and dry it, it reactivated the technology as opposed to it wearing off. It was just completely different from performance cotton pants. DuPont was really wanting to take this to market and were looking for people to work with to do it.
Our challenge was how to turn the story on its head and use the fact that JDC pants, and eventually shirts, were not cotton as THE selling point? In addition to great marketing, and ahead-of-their time fabrics, what I found that translated well from what I learned at Bachrach was what colors and patterns appeal most to the customer. I differentiated the line with dressier more fun, fashion forward colors.
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Within a year JDC was selling, and selling out, in over 300 green grass pro shops across the country.
It was cool to be at the very beginning of the shift to performance fabrics. Today, whether it’s a ski line or yoga, no one really even says performance fabrics anymore because they all are. Everybody understands that synthetic is just better for performance.
After JDC was sold off to a bigger player in the industry, I made a move back into technology, with an even keener idea of how design can intersect with technology and make products of any kind even better.
