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STRONG SUITS

Revitalized Jos. A. Bank menswear chain rolling out stores fast

BY MAURA K. AMMENHEUSER

Remember the ’90s, when the hippest office workers wore jeans and T-shirts on the job? Jos. A. Bank Clothiers prefers not to.

The business-casual trend may have allowed more comfort in the cubicles of America, but it nearly spelled doom for Bank, the century-old, Hampstead, Md.-based menswear chain known for conservative suits.

“We were very suit-driven,” said David Ullman, Bank’s executive vice president and CFO. (Suits comprised half the company’s sales; now they’re 27 percent.) In the mid-1990s, relaxed office dress codes caught Bank off guard. “We were not positioned to offer [men] the sports coat” or other relatively casual work attire, he said.

To survive, Bank broadened its merchandise, offered more-stylish designs, updated the look of its stores, dropped its women’s line and expanded aggressively. Today, “Jos. A. Bank’s become the men’s clothing store,” said Dick Jaffe, president of The Jaffe Corp., an Ormond Beach, Fla., development firm that added a 4,200-square-foot Bank store when it redeveloped The Trails Shopping Center in its hometown in February.

“We went back to our manufacturing heritage and put quality back into the product,” Ullman said. “The rest of the industry was taking quality out of the product.”

Going back to basics, however, does not preclude innovation.

“You may not think of a menswear retailer as innovative,” Ullman said, but “we were one of the first in the marketplace with wrinkle-resistant cotton dress shirts” for travelers. And not just that. Bank also now carries stain-resistant shirts; the secret’s in the weave. “We take that shirt and pour a Coke on it” during visits to investors, said Ullman. The shirt wipes clean. “Every guy says, ‘Oh, I need a couple of those.’ ”

Bank’s sales reached $300 million last year, a 55 percent increase since 1999. The chain plans to grow from its current 211 stores to 500, opening up to 75 units a year.

Bank’s sales reached $300 million last year, says Ullman. He wouldn’t disclose sales per square foot, saying the total includes sales from the Internet and an 8 million-circulation catalog. Sales have risen 55 percent since 1999, when the company’s current leadership took over, and are 23 percent higher than last year, according to company reports. Comp-store sales grew 5.6 percent from 2001 to 2002.

That makes Bank popular with landlords.

“They’re a traditional store,” said David Wasserman, a principal of Starwood Wasserman, the Providence, R.I.-based developer of The Shops On Lake Avenue, Pasadena, Calif., where Bank opened this fall. “They cater to a bit of the Brooks Brothers customer, but with a little more flair” at a reasonable price.

“I think they’re going after a wide range, anybody who would wear a suit — typically, someone with a little more money but not real high-end,” said Randy Goodman, owner of Goodman Real Estate Services Group, Cleveland, which leased Legacy Village, an outdoor center in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Bank moved into a 4,500-square-foot space there from five miles away.

Bank suits cost $300 to $1,300, or $200 to $800 during sales. Though it’s still known for suits, Bank now offers much more — “formal wear to underwear,” its leaders like to say. It sells Traveler twill pants ($79.50), polo shirts (on sale in February, three for $99.99, down from $49.50 each), ties ($44.50 to $52.50), overcoats ($350), shoes, belts, luggage and more.

Observers say Bank’s expansion into more-casual clothing is the big reason for its turnaround. But there are others.

Several years ago, Bank introduced its “three levels of luxury” merchandising: collections dubbed Executive, Signature and Signature Gold, with increasing prices and high-end touches. The company also changed its prototype store to give it “an updated traditional look,” as Ullman puts it. It’s brighter, with a more modern, less formal feel than older stores.

Recent years have also seen a lot more Bank stores. The company operated 103 in 1998; in February it had 211, and Ullman expects to open 50 to 75 more units annually, stopping only when it has 500 stores throughout the United States.

A return to basics does not preclude innovation. Bank was one of the first to offer wrinkle- and stain-free shirts.

Bank is a bright spot in an otherwise spotty menswear market. Men’s apparel trailed women’s in rebounding from the recent recession, and shopping centers are obviously more devoted to women’s stores. Even as the economy improves and men scramble to choose appropriate clothes for work in the face of still-murky office dress codes, few specialty retailers exist solely for men.

“Guys don’t like to shop,” said Mo Bagunu, assistant manager at Arden Fair Mall, Sacramento, Calif., where Bank opened with 4,300 square feet in February 2003.

“It’s a pain in the neck for men to buy clothing most of the time,” Jaffe said. They want “a nice-looking store in a convenient location” with good, reasonably priced merchandise, he said. “If the guy’s tired after work, he stops there, he can find [what he needs] quickly.”

“All the [Bank] stores I’ve been in, they have very attentive help,” said John Paul, a longtime Bank customer living in Woodland Hills, Calif., and Asheville, N.C. “It’s like going into a higher-end store.” He bought a black leather coat at the Pasadena store this spring after noticing that it was on sale for $169 and following a long consultation with the salesman.

Ullman cites department stores as the primary competition. “Our advantage is we provide service and inventory selection,” he said.

Bank’s suits cost far less than those by Armani, Oxxford or Paul Stuart, which charge thousands of dollars, Jaffe says. On the lower end, everyone mentions Houston-based Men’s Wearhouse. Younger men with less money are more likely to shop Men’s Wearhouse, having seen founder George Zimmer’s ubiquitous ads (“You’re gonna like the way you look”). Wearhouse is doing well; sales were up 7 percent last year, to $1.2 billion, out of 506 stores. But it lacks Bank’s quality, sources say.

Bank’s customers “are less concerned with [a suit] being a deal,” Wasserman said.

Some inevitably cite Brooks Brothers, too, as competition, though observers say frequent changes in ownership have affected that upscale chain’s quality and style. “They’ve really become staid,” Jaffe said.

Still, there’s obviously plenty of crossover business between Brooks and Bank.

Tony Sousa, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, is a Bank regular. “It’s a very traditional store, very conservative, which I like,” he said. “I don’t like flashy, Italian style … not the Miami Vice look,” not Armani. Bank’s quality is on par with Brooks, he said, and “much better than Men’s Wearhouse.”

Sousa wears suits constantly, but even his buddy Doug Bohrer, of Visalia, Calif., who works outdoors and lives in jeans, bought a Bank shirt (with a gift certificate from Sousa) after some lengthy, no-pressure, style-related banter with Bank’s store manager.

Today Bank is prepared for any further changes in office dress codes. Some say the trend toward casual work apparel is dead, the style pendulum having swung rapidly back to an all-suits office culture.

“A lot more people are putting on coats and ties today than in the last 10 years,” said Rich Hollander, president of Customer ID, a division of Ft. Worth, Texas-based Buxton, a retail and market research firm. In this post-Sept. 11, less-than-robust economy, “people are taking their business more seriously,” he said. Others, including Ullman, say that may be true, but that business casual will, to some degree, remain a permanent part of the American dress code.

Either way is OK with Jos. A. Bank. The company will continue producing quality midprice suits and more-casual items, Ullman says. “Our interpretation of corporate casual,” he said, “is a sports coat, trousers, merino sweater, polo — not jeans and a T-shirt.”

So far, Bank doesn’t sell denim.

 

 

 

 

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