Brief Background and History of Tommy Hilfiger Brand (Tommy Hilfiger Corporation)

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History of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation

Tommy Hilfiger Corporation primarily markets men's and boys' clothing designed by Tommy Hilfiger. Hilfiger sells a complete line of clothing from socks to shirts, swimwear, jackets, pants, belts, wallets and ties, as well as sleepwear, golf clothes, eyewear, shoes, and fragrances. The company also markets women's clothing, primarily sportswear. Some of these lines are produced under licensing agreements with other companies, who produce the items using Hilfiger designs. The corporation operates over a thousand shops inside established department store chains such as Bloomingdales, Macy's, Saks, Nieman-Marcus, Marshall Field's, Dillard Department Stores, May Department Stores, and Federated Department Stores. The company also operates several dozen freestanding Tommy Hilfiger stores, including huge flagship stores under construction in Beverly Hills and on New Bond Street, London. Though most of its market is in the United States, the company also markets its clothing in Japan, Europe, and in South and Central America.

Origins

Though the company was not incorporated until 1992, its history properly begins with the fortunes of its namesake, Thomas Jacob (Tommy) Hilfiger. Born in Elmira, New York, in 1951, Hilfiger started his first clothing business while still in high school. He and two friends invested $300 in used blue jeans and sold them out of an Elmira basement. Hilfiger never attended college, but built up the blue jean business into a chain of seven upstate New York stores called People's Place. People's Place sold jeans, bell bottom pants, and other clothing, as well as candles, incense, and posters. The stores were successful enough to afford Hilfiger a Porsche, but they were poorly managed. In 1977, People's Place was forced to declare bankruptcy. Hilfiger moved to Manhattan and tried to find work as a clothing designer. Though he had no formal training, he had designed and sold vests and sweaters for People's Place. He worked freelance, and then started a sportswear company that went out of business after only one year. He eventually found work designing jeans for Jordache.

In 1984, Hilfiger was contacted by Mohan Murjani, an Indian textile magnate. Murjani owned the license to Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, and had helped spark the craze for designer jeans in the 1970s. Murjani had an idea to update the popular "preppy" look associated with designer Ralph Lauren, and give it a younger and more mass appeal. He chose Hilfiger to design the line for his firm, Murjani International. But in the beginning, marketing was much more important than the actual clothes.

First Marketing Campaign, 1985

The line of Tommy Hilfiger clothing debuted in the fall of 1985 with an ad campaign that featured no clothes, but declared that Hilfiger was a designer on par with Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis, and Calvin Klein. The ads did little more than insert Hilfiger's name in the pantheon. Yet this was somehow effective. The brashness of the strategy attracted attention in the fashion industry, and caused comment by Johnny Carson and other notables. The first ads were centered on New York City, using print and outdoor media. By 1987, the Hilfiger line was attracting more national attention with advertisements in People, USA Today, Newsweek, GQ, Sports Illustrated, and others. The entire advertising budget for Hilfiger clothing was only $1.4 million, and ads appeared infrequently. But they made a splash with double-page spreads, and because they featured words, logos, or Hilfiger's face, and no images of clothes or models, they stood out from other fashion advertisements. George Lois, who helped create the ads for the firm Lois, Pitts, Gershon, Pon/GGK, claimed in a March 1988 Marketing and Media Decisions article that he could not make Hilfiger's clothes "look any better than anyone else's," and therefore the ads sold "an idea" and not the particular fashion. According to one survey, after only two years of his ads Hilfiger had succeeded in convincing 68 percent of sampled New Yorkers to name him as one of the top four or five important designers. Sales also attested to the brilliance of the marketing strategy. In 1986, Hilfiger brand clothing was available in 60 department stores and 25 specialty shops, and brought in $32 million in retail sales. A year later, retail sales had more than doubled, to $70 million.

Expanding the Label, Late 1980s

By the late 1980s, Murjani International was troubled financially. The company also licensed Gloria Vanderbilt and the Coca-Cola brand of clothing. The company seemed unable to focus adequately on the Hilfiger brand, which was growing enormously. In 1988, Tommy Hilfiger, Mohan Murjani, and two others formed a new company, called Tommy Hilfiger Co. Inc., buying out Murjani International. The deal was complicated, and it took the new company almost a year to finally purchase back from Murjani the rights to the Tommy Hilfiger name. In the meantime, the company found a new financial backer in Hong Kong businessman Silas Chou. Chou's firm, Novel Enterprises, was one of the largest sweater manufacturers in Asia, and the company was willing to invest money in Tommy Hilfiger Company to allow it to expand. The new principles were Chou, Hilfiger, and two former Ralph Lauren executives, Lawrence Stroll and Joel Horowitz. Mohan Murjani was out. With Chou's extensive contacts in the Asian garment industry, the new company not only designed but manufactured Hilfiger clothing, using Asian factories that produced low-cost, high-quality goods.

Mid-90s Successes

Hilfiger's sales went up and up, from $107 million in 1992, to $138 million in 1993, to $227 million in 1994. There were close to 500 Tommy Hilfiger sections within department stores by the mid-1990s. About half the company's revenues came from sales at three big department store chains: Dillard's, federated, and May. Another 15 percent of sales came from the discount chains T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, which sold the outdated stock at lower prices. Hilfiger began opening its own freestanding shops as well, debuting in Stamford, Connecticut, and Columbus, Ohio.

By 1994, it seemed everyone knew who Hilfiger was. President Clinton wore Hilfiger designs, as did the Prince of Wales, rock stars Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Snoop Doggy Dogg. But perhaps the most fanatic fans of Hilfiger designs were urban youths who gave the "preppy" look a new twist. Hip ghetto kids began taking the essentially suburban Hilfiger clothes and wearing them in extra-large sizes, in eclectic mixes with sports gear. Drooping pants from which Hilfiger logo underwear peeked out was one peculiar fashion. The designer noticed the street trend and responded by making extra-extra-extra-large sizes (labelled "giant"), brighter colors, and bigger and bolder logos. It was apparently what the people wanted, and sales soared. Hilfiger had achieved a remarkable level of mass appeal, with everyone from bike messengers to CEOs dressed in his designs.

Sales for 1996 were close to $500 million, and the company's earnings increased over 60 percent. Hilfiger stocks had at times been the highest traded apparel stocks on Wall Street, and investors seemed to love the company's strong growth. The danger to investors, of course, was that the enormously popular Hilfiger brand would suddenly turn stale. Fashion stocks tended to be unpredictable, because apparel's success was mostly dependent on a fickle public. But Tommy Hilfiger Corporation still seemed capable of continued expansion. Profit margins were widening, something investors looked at as an indicator of soundness. And the trend toward casual work clothing that Hilfiger had first taken advantage of was still running. One industry survey indicated that over 20 percent of offices were casual every day--not just Friday. Workers were spending money on nice casual clothes such as Hilfiger designs, and so there did not seem to be a looming end to the clothing's popularity. And though Hilfiger Corporation had brought out its women's line, its staple was still menswear, traditionally more stable than women's apparel. Hilfiger designs were also priced well. General consumers typically spent less than $50 on individual items of clothing, and most Hilfiger apparel was in that range. Nevertheless, Hilfiger was perceived as high quality. The company had not watered down its appeal by making the brand available at lower-end chains such as Penney's and Sears. And by 1997 the company was just beginning to expand into European markets. A huge flagship store was under construction in London, and presumably there was much market potential overseas.

Tommy Hilfiger Corporation had taken a virtually unknown designer and declared him a dean of menswear on par with industry leaders Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Perry Ellis. Remarkably, consumers bought the idea, and bought the clothing. A dozen years after the company's brash inaugural ads, the clothing was selling more strongly than ever, not only in the United States but in Japan, Europe, and Central and South America. The combination of guileful advertising, shrewd management, and a truly appealing and useful product brought the company to this global level. The staying power of a fashion product is always doubtful, but this only makes Hilfiger's present level of success more extraordinary.