Irvine-based BB Dakota, a designer of trendy, affordable women’s clothes, is looking to hire Newport Beach investment bank Roth Capital Partners LLC for a possible public offering or buyout.
“We are working with Roth Capital Partners to explore growth opportunities for the company,” founder and designer Gloria Brandes said.
BB Dakota has yet to make an official deal, according to Paul Zaffaroni, Roth’s vice president of investment banking.
“We’re in the early stages right now,” he said. “We just started working with BB Dakota. All of this is happening in real time.”
BB Dakota could work with Roth Capital to help the company build its brand, according to Zaffaroni.
“The brand is in the young contemporary category which is very strong right now,” he said. “The company has been growing both domestically and internationally and they want to capitalize on it.”
The deal could explore a public offering or sale to a private equity firm or apparel company.
Brandes, wife of financier Richard John “R.J.” Brandes, owns a majority of BB Dakota.
An offering or sale would help the Quebec native cash out of the business she started in the mid 1980s out of her Laguna Beach home.
BB Dakota, which primarily focuses on chic clothes for women ages 18 to 25, also offers some men’s shorts and coats.
Its clothes sell at some 5,000 stores in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Europe and Australia including Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters and boutiques such as Local Color in Newport Beach and No Rest for Bridget in Costa Mesa.
The company competes with Philadelphia-based Urban Outfitters Inc.’s Free People brand and Miss Sixty women’s clothes from Italy’s Sixty SPA.
BB Dakota has been working to build its brand for the past two years.
In 2005, it started licensing its brand to Irvine-based apparel company nZania, owner and licensor of the Black Flys, Blue Cult and Andy Warhol for Levi’s brands.
NZania, owned by apparel veteran Ivan Spiers, helped BB Dakota fine-tune its operations and took over the company’s sales, production and administration.
BB Dakota, which is privately held and doesn’t’t disclose revenues, went from a 30-person operation to about 100, Brandes said in an earlier interview with the Business Journal.
Brandes’ reputation in fashion should help BB Dakota as it looks at its options, Zaffaroni said.
“Gloria is a very talented designer and well respected in the fashion industry,” Zaffaroni said. “She has a unique lifestyle brand that has the potential to grow tremendously.”
