Jeans maker Lee Co. pitches a perfect fit

The company had tried branching out but got lost, one company official said.

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Blue jeans are the most popular piece of apparel in America’s closets and for more than a century have experienced a mostly steady upward climb.

But those who follow fads and finances know it’s a fashion staple that goes through some spectacular cycles. In recent decades, denim has been driven by what models wore while sauntering down designer runways, which can take them from ho-hum to hip in a heartbeat.

The latest of those cycles began in late 2000 with the resurgence of high-fashion jeans at heretofore-unseen prices, starting at $150 to $200, with some gold-stitched and Swarovski-crystal-encrusted pairs soaring to more than $1,000.

At the same time that luxury denim was flying, private label makers were reaching for and achieving a higher level of quality.

All this was good news for the denim industry but bad news for the Lee Co., the iconic jeanswear company based in Merriam, Kan., with more than 130 employees.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, Lee took on competitors by branching into scores of sub-brands, from Lee Riveted, stylish casualwear for men and women, to Lee Pipes, high-fashion durable denimwear for 17-year-old boys hooked on extreme sports. Along the way Lee got lost, said Joe Dzialo, who became chief executive in September 2006 to head up a turbocharged turnaround.

“Lee is an iconic brand, but from 2000 to 2005 Lee struggled; the business actually declined,” said Dzialo, who has returned the jeans maker’s focus on Lee’s most successful mainstay — mainstream, stylish, good-fitting jeans for men and women.

Dzialo said the first order was to stabilize the business, the second to refocus on its core customers, and the third to get their attention. The plan, he said, has turned sales in the right direction and returned stability to the company.

Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at The NPD Group, said Lee in the past two years has been successful at refocusing on jeans that fit, including developing different fits within a range of styles.

“Lee has done a good job of playing that emotional chord with women who were really looking for a good-fitting product,” Cohen said. “And it’s good that they’ve made this promise ... but the key is that they’ve delivered.”

Denim goods have been an American farm and factory mainstay since the late 1800s. In the 1950s they were brought to the mainstream by such celebrities as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.

For decades thereafter, when it came to jeans, consumers pretty much had their pick between Lee’s, which were branded as reliable, and Levi’s, which were tagged a bit more hip.

That all changed in 1980 when Brooke Shields asked the world, ‘Want to know what gets between me and my Calvins?’ and answered, ‘Nothing.”’

Overnight, jeans were elevated to a new realm. Designer jeans had arrived, and soon names like Gloria Vanderbilt and Armani joined Calvin Kleins on store shelves.

Twenty years after Calvin Kleins changed the world of denim, it went through an equally extreme upheaval beginning in the fall of 2000. Los Angeles-based 7 for All Mankind launched tight-fitting, low-waisted jeans that were quickly snapped up by denim divas like Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore, who in turn were photo-snapped by the paparazzi and soon seen by millions in the tabloids and on the Internet.

Lee, after spending a decade branching into sub-brands, and now hit on one end with luxury jeans and on the other by the growing popularity of private-label jeans, got knocked on its behind.

Lee went from being a profit contributor to being a drain on the bottom line for its parent company. Lee is owned by VF Corp., one of the largest apparel marketers in the world and owner of labels such as Wrangler, Rider, North Face and Nautica. In late 2007, VF even spent $775 million for 7 for All Mankind, one of Lee’s nemeses, but now a sister brand.

At that point, Lee decided to refocus on what had previously worked for the company for many years, being the “brand that fits.” VF doesn’t break out revenues or profits for its different labels, but Dzialo said Lee is once again a positive contributor to VF’s bottom line. In its last quarterly report, VF said that its Lee and Wrangler brands led to a 3 percent increase in revenues for its jeanswear division on particularly strong international sales.

Dzialo said the company has undertaken extensive research to understand its customer, research that includes large-scale quantitative analysis and one-on-one interaction, including asking consumers about purchasing intents before and after trying on its jeans.

What Lee came away with is that its customer demands mostly middle-of-the road clothes with a bit of style that are reliable but that most importantly resolve a litany of fit issues confronting its customers’ ever-changing — and often challenging — body shapes.

For instance, many women the company queried complained of jeans “gapping” at the back. So Lee now has a line of jeans that have a wide yet discreet elasticized band in the back. There’s also a line that includes a panel in front that provides a slight pull-in effect.

For both men and women, Lee and other brands have added a “stretch” element to their jeans that “give” at key points, although Lee marketing vice president Liz Calhoun said men’s products are positioned as being “flexible.”

“You can’t say ‘stretch’ to men,” Calhoun said.