KEEPING VAGUE
Ambiguous is an Underground Favorite and Growing
By JENNIFER BELLANTONIO
Talk about due diligence.
When apparel industry veteran Don Kerkes was looking to invest in Irvine clothing upstart Ambiguous Industries, he turned to his teen-age daughter.
“She said, ‘Yeah, Dad, it’s the new hot brand,'” Kerkes recalled.
Next, Kerkes said, he sounded out some hip retailers.
“I went to Jack’s and Beach Access and talked to the kids selling the product,” he said.
They raved about Ambiguous.
The clincher: a Christmas party put on by Ambiguous founder Frank Delgadillo at a local club, Kerkes said.
Early in the evening, 11- and 12-year-olds were hanging out playing games, he said. By 9 p.m. or so, the place was jammed with hundreds of 20-somethings. Outside, a big line of people waited to get in, he said.
“Twenty-five percent or more were wearing Ambiguous clothes,” Kerkes said. “They created this brand that 11- and 12-year-olds love, and 21 and above believe in, too. You have an opportunity to sell to a pretty big cross-section of kids.”
Kerkes, former sales vice president for the men’s division of Santa Monica-based Mossimo Inc., was sold. He joined Ambiguous in 1999, a move that marked a shift for the company Delgadillo founded in 1995 while he was a Chapman University pre-law student.
“(The partnership) makes (retailers) feel more comfortable,” Delgadillo said. “With Don’s expertise and our knowledge on how to keep the design concept authentic, it was the perfect match. That’s the downfall of most small companies. They don’t have the expertise.”
And Ambiguous is small. Kerkes and Delgadillo decline to disclose yearly sales (industry sources put Ambiguous in the range of $2 million to $5 million, but company officals say those figures are low). The company, which contracts out for production of its clothes, counts about 15 employees.
But Ambiguous is hot. The company falls somewhere between big surfwear makers such as Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc. and more trendy designers such as Newport Beach-based Paul Frank Industries Inc.
In six years, the number of stores offering its T-shirts, hats, jackets, jeans and other products has grown from 50 to 500. Along with domestic sales, the company also ships to Japan, Canada and, just recently, South America and Puerto Rico.
“Buyers are always looking for what’s next, and Ambiguous has been one of those ‘what’s next’ brands,” said Darin Dennee, publisher at Laguna Beach-based ASR Trade Expo. “It’s great to see a young brand stick and work.”
Ambiguous has tapped Seattle-based Foundation to develop its first marketing campaign. Until now, Ambiguous worked off a word-of-mouth buzz. Rock bands such as Alien Ant Farm and Black Eyed Peas, sport the company’s clothes.
“We anticipate to at least double our account base globally with our first-time launch of any kind of marketing campaign,” Delgadillo said.
The company’s first accounts, The Closet (unorthodox), an ur-ban fashion shop in Costa Mesa, and Jack’s Surfboards in Newport Beach and Hunting-ton Beach, continue to reorder.
“They have their own niche market,” said Bobby Abdel of Jack’s in Newport Beach. “We do well with the brand. The brand is something different from the surf market and has a lot of followers in Huntington and Newport.”
While starting Ambiguous, Delgadillo worked for his private investigator dad and for United Parcel Service Inc. He started the company from his Chapman dorm room.
Delgadillo said he always had been into clothes, but he “didn’t have any clue on how to (design or make) anything.”
He said he learned tips from silk screeners and friends in the industry and eventually developed some hats and basic denim pants.
“We didn’t have any money to do labeling,” Delgadillo said.
Instead, he embroidered the bottom back of a pant leg with the word “Ambiguous,” a name he came up with while writing a legal paper.
“I needed a synonym for the word vague,” he said.
Delgadillo and a helper, Gil Rivera, head of promotions and OC sales, went store to store showing the first line: hats, men’s T-shirts and denim pants.
Instead of bringing a rack display, he said he carried everything in a box.
“It was so raw and edgy,” he said.
Delgadillo got one of his first big orders from a Japanese company that had heard about Ambiguous through trade shows. The amount: $12,000. It stunned Delgadillo at the time.
“I had to borrow money from my parents to buy product and fabric (to fill the order),” he said chuckling. “The first year was slow and tedious, a lot of ups and downs. That’s kind of how it’s been. I didn’t even realize the growth.”
But the light went on, Delgadillo said, when he was getting more demand than he could supply. Soon, he was storing product in his dorm room and a storage facility near Chapman.
Without knowing it, Delgadillo overcame one of his biggest fears, which was “getting product into the store and having it dive,” he said.
Delgadillo said he wanted skaters, surfers and snowboarders to accept his products as more of a lifestyle brand.
“What they did was the most difficult thing to do if you want to be part of the Orange County apparel scene,” Kerkes said. “It seems to me that most (upstart) companies don’t make it.”
Ambiguous is based out of a no-frills office in Irvine. Its line has evolved to include men’s woven and knit tops, sweaters, jackets and sweatshirts and hats and other accessories. The company also is planning a junior women’s line, Kerkes said.
Ambiguous has made a name for itself alongside Quiksilver, Costa Mesa-based Volcom and Irvine-based Billabong USA, which have a lot of marketing muscle.
The company’s new ads appear side-by-side with the industry’s big names in trade publications. While Ambiguous sponsors team riders, its ads stick out because they’re noticeably absent of action sports.
The ads are stark and feature just a white box,a bit of electronics dubbed the “Ambiguous machine”,and the company’s logo. Future ads are set to build on the theme.
“We’ve taken this tack because it’s vague and unexplained,” said Peter Stocker, brand director at Foundation, which counts Tommy Bahama Sportswear and Union Bay, among others, as clients. “We’re going to let people read into it for a while.”
“We want people to question it, because once they ask, you know they’re interested,” Delgadillo said.
Added Kerkes: “We need to remain as ambiguous as possible.”
But that could be challenging as ambiguous grows.
“I guess you could say they are becoming less ambiguous as the lifestyle emphasis in the action sports marketplace becomes increasingly prevalent,” ASR’s Dennee said. “It appears that retailers are really starting to understand the lifestyle angle to the brand.”
