A North Carolina menswear brand can hardly do better than being bought by Richemont, the global conglomerate that’s home to luxury brands like Cartier jewelry and Chloé couture. Just ask Chris Knott, founder and creative director of Peter Millar. Richemont bought his company one year ago. That kind of clout benefits retailers like Greenville’s Rush Wilson Limited, which, after carrying the brand since Peter Millar was founded in 2001, has been designated one of only 10 Peter Millar “Crown Shops” in the country.
Before crowds came in for a Peter Millar trunk show and grand opening at Rush Wilson last week, Knott sat down with UBJ to discuss the relationships that are part of taking a brand to its next level at every stage of the game.
How does the relationship between Peter Millar and local retailers work?
The whole Peter Millar business started on the backs of the Rush Wilsons of the world. I probably showed him a little sweater card at a regional trade show and he said, “Hey we’ve know this guy a long time, I’ll take a dozen sweaters.” That really is how it works. I knew his father going way back. There are all these relationships.
How do retailers make the brand their own?
The line is really broad, but our DNA is the same. If you walked in a store in Chicago, it may not look like how Rush has bought it, but it’s not like you’re going to see a bunch of stuff that’s made just for Chicago. Each retailer has his own handwriting, and people gravitate towards that. I’d say Rush’s is kind of classic, updated traditional, a little more English, but he pushes them just to edge of their comfort zone.
You’ve got to push men sometimes. With our brand we have to take a pattern and tweak it enough so it feels fresh enough to sell but we don’t get too far out of anybody’s comfort zone to where it freaks them out.
So how does a retailer get to become a Crown Shop?
First, we want to make sure we know the retailer well enough because you’re really joining a business; there are some investments from both parties. Also, we don’t want one on every corner. We want to be able to take people in a 100 to 200 mile radius to this shop.
To really tell your brand’s message, you’ve got to have a shop, otherwise the merchandise gets scattered throughout the store. My partner (Chairman and CEO, Scott Mahoney) came out of Ralph Lauren, one of the greatest brands in the world, and he really knew how to do that stuff. I didn’t. We turn down big box department stores all the time because they’re not quite high end enough to sell our product. We’d rather have it at a specialty retailer. We’ve protected our people who got us started.
You have a lot of control of just about every detail of the brand.
You have to. We have a rigger who goes and sets up all the shops. If a retailer wants to have an event, we’ll help put it together and even get the printed invitations. And we live the lifestyle that we’re selling. We’re all 48-year-old guys running the company and you’ll see us at the office stripping down and trying on shirts and boxers, so we know when something doesn’t fit right.
How did you weather the recession?
It was a tough time but the economy crashing was the best thing that ever happened to us. That luxury customer that used to buy whatever he wanted started buying our stuff. We were too inexpensive for some retailers before.
Is that how Richemont started paying attention?
Yohann Rupert, the chairman of Richemont, is a golfer, and he got turned onto our business by seeing our stuff at clubs wherever he went. He liked the way it fit and started buying it up for himself. Now, we’re a small holding for a company like that that holds Cartier and Monteblanc, but he saw us as the next great American brand.
We’re not trying to open a lot of new accounts in the U.S., just do more business with our retailers more profitably. Richemont’s going to give us more of a global presence. A lot of countries don’t have as many specialty stores as this in the U.S. Everything’s vertical. It’s more brands and tailors. So we’ll probably start opening stores strategically around the world.
Has the Richemont relationship affected your creative goals or processes at all?
Zero. They have really been hands-off. We feel so lucky to partner with them. You’ve got to have somebody with deep pockets if you’re going to keep growing. A private equity firm would have wanted to get it to the next level then find the next exit strategy. This deal with Richemont could be your last stop. They didn’t buy Peter Millar to ramp it up and flip it.
Our previous partners, Winona Capital, were a rare private equity firm. I’ll never forget when they came in: a couple of the key guys were wearing beautiful clothing I recognized. You’re going to get the same MBA mentality from any investors but those guys had thread in their veins. They loved clothes.
Did you always have it in mind that you would scale up and exit?
Never. When I started this company I’d just had a baby, I was remodeling a house, and my employer was getting rid of sales reps. I was really just figuring out how I would sustain my income. If somebody would have told me it was going to be this, it probably would have scared me so bad I wouldn’t have done it.
But thank goodness it happened. You can’t stop it. When you start growing, there are so many things that come at you – good things – that you’ve got to keep evolving. You outgrow your financing. Your needs change. Now looking back I can see how it happened. Was there a lot of luck in there? Absolutely.
You’ve been selling men’s clothes this since you were 14 years old. What’s your take on the apparel industry today?
Collegiate lines like Vineyard Vines and Southern Tide got the young customer back into the men’s store. People like Rush and I went through an era where this Seattle grunge influence was all over the country. Then everything got gourmet and was made in Italy. But the collegiate lines have been the greatest thing to happen to men’s specialty stores in a long time. We’re back in the phase again where you could open a men’s store in the right town and make it. Menswear is hot as a firecracker right now.
