Can Fancy Pants Denim Brands Get Men to Follow the Women?

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Fashion is a little like puberty it takes males two to three years to catch up to females. That’s certainly the state of today’s premium denim market.


Locally based manufacturers of high-end jeans, which are pushing the limits of what they can charge women, are expanding or creating new lines that they hope will appeal to male consumers, most of whom are unaccustomed to spending over $50 a pair.


True Religion Apparel Inc. and Seven for All Mankind LLC are among the companies either creating or tinkering with their men’s lines, and they are being joined by other smaller manufacturers who want a piece of the action.


“Men’s is going to be a huge force in the market. All of a sudden everybody is trying to climb in at the same time,” said Albert Dahan, owner of R & D; Surplus LLC, a Los Angeles-based apparel manufacturer that introduced a men’s line called Stitch’s five months ago.


The rush of companies into the men’s market is similar to what happened with women’s denim a few years ago, when premium jean companies became the rage. That market nearly doubled to $1.1 billion in 2004 from $600 million in 1999, according to the NPD Group, a marketing consulting firm.


At this point, however, there’s little room left for companies to carve out a niche in that market and build brand recognition. NPD projects that premium jean sales will remain flat this year from last, following three years of double-digit growth.


The men’s sector is seen as the next premium jeans frontier now considered a virtual fashion wasteland where lower-priced merchandise rules. But making premium jeans for men generally those running $100 or more is risky. “Men are not fashionistas yet,” acknowledged Charles Lesser, chief financial officer of Los Angeles-based jean maker True Religion. “Maybe they are in New York or in Los Angeles, but they certainly are not in Peoria.”


Men currently account for 20 percent of True Religion’s jean sales and 70 percent of those sales are from European and Japanese men, who are more often at the fashion forefront.



Rags and riches


Still, manufacturers believe it’s a matter of time before premium jeans start hanging in men’s wardrobes in the United States. Part of their calculation is that men’s premium jeans constitute a tiny fraction of the premium jeans market, itself only a slice of the nearly $12 billion U.S. denim industry. Thus, there is plenty of room for growth.


Part of the challenge is getting men to break allegiances with old standbys such as Levi Strauss & Co. “Guys like to see what other guys are doing before they buy into it,” said Roseanne Morrison, a fashion editor at the Tobe Report.


Premium jean companies are tinkering with their products to ensure they are more masculine looking, such as by stripping feminine motifs, including brighter-colored stitching.


Fortune Casuals LLC, a Culver City-based apparel manufacturer, has a premium denim brand called Paige Premium Denim, which features separate men’s and women’s lines. The premium women’s line had a honey-colored patch on the back, while the men’s patch is deep brown.


“It was something that men might not gravitate to,” said Paige Adams-Geller, president of Paige Premium Denim.


But even if men like the look of premium jeans, they may remain unwilling to pay higher prices, so manufacturers are starting out slowly. Blue Pen Inc., manufacturers of Blue Cult jeans, has a line of lower-priced premium denim with prices starting at $88. “You are serving someone who wants a premium looking jean, but who doesn’t want to pay the higher price point,” said Tara Narayan, Blue Pen’s marketing director.


The hope is that once men pay for the lower-priced jeans, they’ll grow accustomed to opening their wallet for $100-plus merchandise.


Marle Fogle, manager of Tryst, a Studio City boutique that carries premium jeans for both sexes, said that she has noticed that more men are buying the jeans, but so far they are sticking to bigger brand names True Religion and Seven for All Mankind. “It takes a little while for men to branch out,” she said.

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