California Apparel News

The founders of C&C California Inc., the much-touted Tshirt company whose brightly colored tops quickly became a must-have staple in many women’s closets, may have been acquired this year by a big East Coast firm, but that doesn’t mean the Los Angeles apparel venture is going corporate.

At least not yet.

Blue jeans are still the company uniform. Cut-to-order T-shirts are still the main product. And Claire Stansfield and Cheyann Benedict, the duo behind the label, still share an office, albeit a larger office, with one new addition.

That new addition is Claire’s 4-month-old son, Lucky, who comes to work every day and is never far from his mother’s desk. With his 500-watt smile and 2 ounces of drool, he serves as the unofficial greeter to anyone visiting the simple executive suite.

The corporate shadow of Liz Claiborne Inc., which bought the company early this year, seems far away. “We are our own bosses,” said Stansfield, a former actress best remembered for her role as the villainess Alti on the TV show “Xena: Warrior Princess.” “I answer to Cheyann. She answers to me. And we don’t pay attention to each other.”

That kind of lighthearted humor is what keeps the company from becoming too stuffy.

Even though the climate at C&C seems California cool, big plans are in the works now that Liz Claiborne, the voracious apparel giant that has been on a buying spree, is the owner.

C&C, whose practical but attractive T-shirts have been donned by actresses Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston and Teri Hatcher, was its latest West Coast acquisition. In January, the New York firm announced it had bought the T-shirt company for $28 million plus additional payments in 2007, 2008 and 2009, based on the company’s earnings. According to documents filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, Liz Claiborne executives estimate those additional payouts will total anywhere from $30 million to $50 million.

Since the acquisition, C&C has expanded its headquarters and staff by about 50 percent. Even with a larger staff of 38, this year’s sales volume, projected at $26 million, will be only slightly higher than last year’s $24 million.

“This year we’ve been working on infrastructure,” said Benedict, the more nuts-and-bolts side of the pair. “Then we will probably start growing at about 20 percent a year.”

Expanding on T-shirts

To do that, C&C has brought on Stephen Cox, whom they jokingly introduced as their intern. His real title is vice president of merchandising.

With his previous experience working at The Wet Seal Inc. and The Limited, he has knowledge of the corporate world and its financial reporting requirements. He will be helping the co-chief executives add several products to their apparel lineup, which has consisted almost exclusively of women’s tops in six styles and 10 colors made of a filmy knit fabric.

C&C will be expanding to cashmere tops, ribbed tops, rayon tops, silk print tops, skirts, dresses and bottoms in various fabrics for its womenswear line. For Spring ’06, they are working on what they call the “Club Med” collection, which consists of gauzy tops and bottoms with only one embellishment, drawstring beads. “Those are our money beads,” Stansfield said, explaining that at Club Med resorts, everyone pays for drinks and other items with beads worn around their necks.

With its very own in-house fit model, Stansfield is hoping to grow the company’s babywear and childrenswear categories, which until now have made up less than 5 percent of the company’s offerings. In addition, more options are being considered for menswear.

On the retail front, the T-shirt company will soon have a shop-within-a-shop inside four California Bloomingdale’s department stores and a Lexington Avenue store in New York. The N.Y. mini-shop opens Nov. 11. And selling to overseas stores, which has made up about 20 percent of the company’s revenues, is another growth goal.

Beach products sold under the C&C California Beach label are on the horizon as well as home accessories.

With Liz Claiborne’s experience in licensing, C&C is poised to lend its name to a number of products, beginning with swimwear. Licenses for towels, sun block, flip-flops and sunglasses could fall under the beach division.

Humble beginnings

This is quite a change from 2002, when Stansfield and Benedict started their company out of their own homes not knowing anything about the apparel business. “We knew about four people in the apparel business,” Stansfield remembered. “And we were always pumping them for information.”

The two tell the story of going to a contractor’s small factory with a supply of fabric and patterns only to learn the contractor didn’t “cut.”

“We walked out of there asking each other, what does that mean he doesn’t cut?” Stansfield recalled.

They didn’t know what “markers” meant and were pretty sketchy on other garment terminology.

“When people asked us if we were factored, we didn’t know if that was good or bad, so we didn’t know how to bluff that one,” Stansfield said.

When they started, Stansfield was head of publicity, and Benedict, who had a retail background having set up Calypso Christiane Celle stores in New York and Los Angeles, was head of production.

Stansfield filled a basket with the company’s T-shirts and visited people such as Lisa Love, the West Coast editor of Vogue magazine, to drum up press.

From her entertainment industry days, Stansfield knew Kate Forte, the head of Harpo Films, which is owned by Oprah Winfrey. She took a basket of T-shirts to her, and before you know it, the T-shirt was featured among Winfrey’s “Favorite Things” on her TV show.

The new apparel company had to quickly build a rudimentary Web site listing the stores that carried its tops, which retail for $40 to $50.

The T-shirts’ popularity expanded from there. “It is the most versatile line of T-shirt out there right now,” said Molly Fishkin of Dari, a trendy boutique in Studio City, Calif.

Going corporate

Pam Harris, owner of Flip Flop, a specialty store in Manhattan Beach, Calif., ordered about $30,000 worth of tees in three months at the beginning of the craze. But Harris is ordering fewer T-shirts now that Liz Claiborne has taken over. “It’s not as popular for me now,” she said. “It is kind of like when any small designer goes corporate, people feel that.”

Also in the early days, Harris could order her shipments on a C.O.D. basis with an agreement that her check be held 10 to 15 days. That made it easier to balance the books. Now, under Liz Claiborne, she said she has to pay with a credit card or be factored with C&C California.

That is all part of the growing pains C&C will be facing. And growing beyond a small company is possible now with a beefed-up staff and a 12,000- square-foot office in an industrial complex off San Fernando Road.

“Our strategy was to create a T-shirt company to get a hook into the marketplace, be bought and become a lifestyle company,” Benedict said.

The two women have signed contracts with Liz Claiborne to stay on with the company for five years, so they may have time to do that.

“We don’t want to lose the magic we can bring to the company,” Stansfield said. “It is, after all, still our baby.”