Who knew socks could be hip?
Stance Inc. did, and now it will try to do the same with men’s underwear.
“We feel like we have the momentum in the marketplace, and if we can get the product right and bring it to market in a compelling way, then that consumer who loves Stance and has been wearing our product and sees an underwear fixture next to a Stance socks fixture, is going to say, ‘Awesome, I can get my underwear now from Stance,’ ” said John Wilson, president of the San Clemente-based company.
“That’s what we are counting on taking place, and we believe it will, but we also know that we need to get product packaging, pricing—we got to get them right.”
It looks as though Wilson and his team have gotten several things right since the company got started in 2009.
“The company has grown tremendously from a headcount perspective, as well as our revenue perspective in the last 12 months,” he said, adding that Stance’s staff, now at 116, will likely reach 125 by the end of the year. That’s up from 25 employees a year ago.
The growth will get a boost next year when a licensing agreement to be the official “on-court” sock brand for the NBA kicks off. The socks will bear Stance’s logo, a league first for a uniform accessory.
“It’s going to be huge for us,” Wilson said.
The company followed the NBA deal with an expansion of its performance, or athletic, collections and now offers golf, running and motocross.
“Building out that performance side of the business has been really important to us,” he said. “We’ve been seeing some great successes there.”
Also contributing to the growth is a line of women’s socks in its third year.
“Our women’s business has been growing faster than men’s over the last 12 months, which is really exciting to see,” Wilson said. “It’s been on a tear.”
Stance sells its products to retailers through a network of distributors and has expanded its international reach to 44 countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
It’s also “marching forward with plans to open a couple retail stores” of its own, Wilson said.
His team turned to Dan Levine, “the guy who invested in Stance on day one” and who’s “got a great retail background” that includes stints as president of RVCA in Costa Mesa, vice president of merchandising and design at Hurley Inc. in Costa Mesa, and chief merchandising officer at Skullcandy Inc. in Park City, Utah. Levine took on the role of executive vice president of retail for Stance.
The company plans to open one brick-and-mortar store on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. Several pop-up shops also are in the works. The brand plans to shy away from traditional mall settings and is instead looking for “a free-standing concept, a street location,” Wilson said.
“We’d like to have something in Orange County, but we don’t have anything finalized yet,” he said. “We want to get these two locations out there, see how things go, and then react accordingly. We would love to do more than two stores, but how many more and when we do them and where, is all going to be a function of how the initial stores test out.”
Zaengle
Stance also created an executive vice president of global e-commerce position and hired Paul Zaengle, who came from Lululemon Athletica Inc. in Vancouver, where he served as senior vice president of U.S. retail.
He’s in charge of accelerating Stance’s online growth and e-commerce.
“Paul really rounds out the senior team,” Wilson said. “That was the one component that was not there. … We launched a new website about 45 days ago, and we are really excited about the way it looks and feels, as well as how it functions.”
Both Stance stores and its website will carry the men’s underwear line when it launches during the holiday shopping season. The company is also counting on its sock distributors around the world to pick up the collection, which will consist of boxers and boxer briefs.
Don’t expect run-of-the-mill tighty-whities for Stance’s debut in a market that reached $2.7 billion and grew 3% in the 12 months ending last September.
“Obviously, there are other players in the market, but we don’t see anybody doing it well from A to Z, meaning … incredible brand position complemented by well-thought-through product strategy, supported by really good packaging, in-store picturing, and all of that being supported by great make storytelling,” he said. “There are different elements of that out there where you can look to a brand and say, well, they’ve got some good product, but the name is not great, or the branding is off, or they may have good packaging, but they don’t have the rest of the formula.
“We are definitely thinking through temperature regulation, moisture management, the overall fit of the product, how it hangs—all those things, but I’m definitely not prepared at this point, because we haven’t gone to the market yet, to disclose what it is we are doing exactly.”
Stance is on the right track, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc. in Port Washington, N.Y., whose data show that performance and smart fabrics, along with celebrity branding, are the most sought-out features of men’s underwear.
“With smarter fabrics and more clever technology, the underwear market is evolving,” Marshal Cohen, NPD Group’s chief industry analyst, said in a statement. “Even if men don’t use any or all of these more advanced features, they still take comfort in the fact that they have them, a mentality that designers and retailers should keep in mind. These features … put men’s underwear right in line with other fashion products now.”
‘Desirable Spin’
The increase in celebrity underwear branding puts a “desirable spin on the product,” Cohen said. “Male celebrities are not only modeling and endorsing the product but putting their name on it as they would a line of sneakers or cologne, further demonstrating the growing prominence of this men’s category.”
Stance’s got that angle too—its roster of celebrity and other brand aficionados, or “punks and poets” as they’re called at the brand’s San Clemente headquarters, will also be involved in the underwear marketing campaign.
“Telling the right story to support underwear is going to be part of the plan, for sure,” Wilson said.
Stance is a private employee-owned company. Several venture capital firms have invested in the brand but none owns a majority interest. Menlo Park-based August Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers contributed to a $50 million pool of funds in March. Stance also received $25.9 million in July from Salt Lake City-based Mercato Partners.
