PRINT THIS STORY:

CHANGE TEXT SIZE:

MARC ECKO ROLLING OUT STORES, GRAFFITI AND ALL

By Neil Janowitz

Some empires strike back. Others decline and fall. Marc Ecko decided it was time for his empire to get some stores.

In 1993 Marc Ecko, a 20-year-old pharmacy major at Rutgers University, launched Ecko Unlimited (in the company’s urban-edgy iconography, the brand name is set as *ecko unltd.) as a relatively modest collection of T-shirts with a street bent.

Since then, the company has morphed into a massive, cross-genre giant with clothing, publishing and video-game offerings. All the while, save for some scattered general outlets, the company has never had a store presence of its own. So its graffiti-artist-cum-fashion-guru founder plans to use a chain of stores to communicate that broadened range. “It’s the next step in the evolution of the company,” said Clint Cantwell, director of corporate communications at Marc Ecko Enterprises. “The only element of our business that hasn’t been developed is our own stores. That’s going to be our primary focus over the next few years. And over the next year and a half or so, we’ll be opening more than 100 stores, encompassing the different brands under the Marc Ecko umbrella.”

This will be an aggressive foray, certainly. (Already about 60 are open.) And on one hand, the numbers suggest there may be some wisdom in it. The company, which remains primarily apparel-driven, raked in $1.5 billion in sales last year, up 25 percent from the year before, according to Effy Zinkin, the president of Marc Ecko Enterprises. On the other hand, analysts suggest that the company may be overestimating its relevance in an increasingly crowded playing field. That’s what Jeanine Pesce, a consultant at the U.S. arm of PromoStyl, a Paris-based trend forecast firm, cautions at any rate.

“It’s a great idea,” said Pesce. “I just wish the company had done it a couple years ago. Back then they would’ve been the first in the genre to do so.” Pesce says a bigger potential problem is that the core Ecko customer may be getting harder to identify. “It used to be a youthful demographic coming from the skate-urban-graffiti communities,” said Pesce.

Perhaps the company is trying to keep catering to those customers as they grow older, Pesce speculates. “They may be trying to separate themselves by offering a more mature version of the street-wear concept. That may work — their Cut & Sew brand is like a cheaper version of Sean John.”

Ecko is counting on its young fan base to feed its stores, and it is confident that the Ecko shopper of yore is still very much in the picture. “Our primary focus is on the 14-to-35-year-old customer, and we thrive in culturally and ethnically diverse areas,” said Zinkin. “We’re the largest young men’s resource in department stores in the U.S., because we appeal to the multidimensional tastes of today’s youth, including sports, hip-hop, motocross and gaming.”

The company plans to slowly roll out a series of full-price and outlet stores that will cater exclusively to a particular Ecko brand, Zinkin says. “We’ll be opening stores that represent six of our different divisions,” he said. “The main one will be Ecko Unlimited, featuring our flagship young men’s line. It’s geared toward the 14-to-24-year-old male. Our contemporary menswear line, Cut & Sew, takes over from there and targets men between 20 and 35. Then we have our midtier Avirex sportswear and outerwear collection, our action-sports-inspired Zoo York line, our newly relaunched Red by Marc Ecko young women’s line, and Ecko Kids, which will carry clothes and accessories for boys and girls. All stores will additionally carry pop culture such as toys, books and games.”

Aside from Cut & Sew, which will sell only full-price merchandise, the company will initially open about half a dozen brand-specific outlet stores before launching the premium shops. After the company has evaluated those for any kinks, it will open roughly 30 more outlet stores and some full-price shops. Ecko Unlimited and Cut & Sew are the only brands that already have nonoutlet stores open, with six and three, respectively. The other four brands will be outlet-only until 2009.

For now the Cut & Sew, Ecko Kids, Red by Marc Ecko and Zoo York stores will measure about 2,500 square feet, the Avirex units will measure 3,000 square feet, and the Ecko Unlimited stores will measure 3,500 square feet. The mother ship will be a massive 30,000-square-foot store in New York City’s Times Square called Marc Ecko Presents, which will not only stock the various Ecko brands, but also a wide range of other products and services appealing to young people, says Zinkin.

The company is aggressively seeking high-profile mall and street locations, particularly those that would yield sales upwards of $500 per square foot in major metropolitan areas, Zinkin says. All the stores will be company owned.

Though the rollout plans for this year were simple — roughly 65 stores in total by yearend, with the majority being Ecko Unlimited units — it has already begun to have an impact. Les Morris, Simon Property Group’s manager of corporate public relations, says he has already noticed shoppers embracing the Cut & Sew stores that opened at Roosevelt Field, Garden City, N.Y., in June. “ Cut & Sew is already contributing positively to the vitality of that center,” he said. “Customers seem to really appreciate the concept and the products it offers.” Considering that Ecko is just a fraction of the way into its expansion goals, Simon should get lots of opportunities.