Jaya Apparel Group: The Transformation of L'Koral

The first thing you notice about Jane Siskin is her shoulder-length pouf of blonde hair, which creates a golden cloud around her tan face.

The second thing you notice is that Siskin, chief executive of Jaya Apparel Group in Vernon, Calif., doesn’t waste time. A ball of energy, she is pushing her more than $150 million apparel company forward, transforming it from its roots as a fast-turn juniors tops manufacturer to a company that grabs the latest apparel opportunity out there. That could be in juniors, moderates, contemporary or on the Web.

“We have 11 or 12 brands as we speak, some owned and some licensed,” said Siskin, sitting inside her vast office, sparsely decorated with little more than a large desk and a conference table. “We have become known as a brand-building company.”

Siskin works on both coasts of the United States. During her 16 years with the apparel venture, she has lived in New York. (She grew up in Long Island.) But three times a month, she flies to Los Angeles to work out of the company headquarters, plotting how to make the brands more successful.

One of the more famous brands the company has been working on is Elizabeth and James, the contemporary label licensed in 2007 from movie stars turned designers Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Jaya is also producing the Olsen twins’ denim-oriented Textile Elizabeth and James contemporary sportswear label and their juniors sportswear label, Olsenboye. The label, launched last year, is sold exclusively at JCPenney at retail prices ranging from $24 to $58.

Jaya also designs its own youth-oriented contemporary label, Patterson J. Kincaid, but last year put contemporary label LaROK on hiatus.

Being on the contemporary end of apparel wasn’t how the apparel company started out. Jaya Apparel used to be called L’Koral Industries, a longtime maker of private-label tops for the fast-turn juniors market. The company was started in 1982 by Peter Koral, who went on to become known as the man who in 2000 put 7 For All Mankind in the premium-denim spotlight. He later sold the label to VF Corp. in 2007 for $775 million. During that time, Siskin was the company’s president.

But in 2009, Siskin bought out the rest of Koral’s share of the company, making her and a silent partner the new owners of a venture with 200 employees. Jaya is located in a boxy warehouse in an industrial zone near downtown Los Angeles, where the whiff of coffee wafts over from the nearby Gavintilde;a Gourmet Coffee headquarters. Down the street is sausage maker Farmer John.

New owners required a new name. Thus, Jaya, which means victorious in Sanskrit, was born. “It was a new beginning for us,” Siskin said, sitting at a conference table, her demanding Blackberry squarely in front of her. “The company is so different today than it was three or four years ago.”

Ilse Metchek, president of the California Fashion Association, agrees. She has watched the clothing company’s evolution over the years. “It is a totally different company with a different profile,” she said.

Shelda Hartwell-Hale, vice president of buying trend-forecasting company Directives West in Los Angeles, has known Siskin for years and has seen her changes to the company. “Her lines are priced right— great fashion and on trend. And she is all about service,” she said.

Tacking in a new direction

Siskin knew that the faltering economy meant that an apparel company that wanted to survive couldn’t chug along at the same speed. “You can’t run your business the same way you ran it 20 years ago,” said Siskin, wearing a size-28 pair of skinny-leg jeans, gold-lameacute; ankle boots and a long black jacket over a white top.

The savvy CEO and her team scouted out retail stores to identify “white areas” to fill voids. That is why Jaya took the leap into contemporary. Now, sales from contemporary brands make up one-third of the company’s revenues, with juniors and girls’ apparel making up the rest.

“This year we opened Payne,” Siskin said proudly, referring to the new “diffusion performance line” the company started delivering in August to stores such as Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom.

Payne, done in conjunction with former model Heather Payne, takes workout wear and mixes it with casualwear so you can go directly from the gym to a social event without breaking a sweat.

“You can wear a legging and a performance top to a workout and then throw on a Payne stretch leather miniskirt and chic jacket and go right from the gym to lunch with your girlfriends,” Siskin said, noting that leggings start at $88 and chic jackets sell for close to $400. The activewear has wicking and antimicrobial elements.

Jaya is also venturing into the world of Internet apparel sites. The company partnered in July with the Olsen twins on StyleMint (www.stylemint.com), their new digital fashion venture. StyleMint is part e-commerce and part social network. Members pay $29.99 a month to get wardrobe selections styled by the twins as well as a T-shirt sent to them every month. Jaya is manufacturing the T-shirts.

StyleMint is part of BeachMint, the Santa Monica, Calif.–based company started by MySpace co-founder Josh Berman and Diego Berdakin. The company also has JewelMint, a jewelry-of-the-month club done in conjunction with actress Kate Bosworth and Cher Coulter, her stylist.

With more and more contemporary labels out there, Siskin’s latest take on the apparel world is that the contemporary field is getting crowded. More moderate wear might be in Jaya’s future for revenues to grow 20 percent to 30 percent in 2012, which is Siskin’s goal.

“There are a lot of things being stirred in the pot,” Jaya’s chief executive said. “We don’t do things just to do them but identify an opportunity. There are changes going on in moderates and the mass-merchants area. ... People are going to change their structure [in moderates] and get rid of a lot of tertiary and, possibly, secondary labels and replace those older brands with new brands. They are kicking the can down the road.”

Jaya wants to be ready to replace those moderate brands with something new while keeping its contemporary labels on everyone’s shelves. “Jaya is kind of an interesting place to be,” Siskin said. “We sell everything from the mass merchants to Neiman Marcus. Not everyone can say that.”