by David Lipke and Claire Wilson
PEI’s retro-cool label builds more buzz with Manhattan showcase
Original Penguin by Munsingwear is flying high.
Last week the retro-cool men’s label opened its first retail store in New York, in addition to finalizing a license with Core Distribution to wholesale the label throughout Europe. The 2,000-square-foot Original Penguin boutique is located at 1071 Avenue of the Americas, across the street from Bryant Park, and carries the brand's full range of men’s sportswear, footwear and accessories.
"We chose this location because the Bryant Park area is evolving, with New York Fashion Week located here and other activities, like the outdoor summer movies, held here,” said Chris Kolbe, Original Penguin’s brand manager. The new store, which Kolbe expects to gross $1.5 million to $2 million a year, is situated between a Training Camp athletic footwear store and a temporarily vacant retail space.
Designed by ODG Architecture to resemble a luxurious suburban home, the store occupies a long, narrow space that is divided into four distinct areas, each designed to conceptually invoke an outdoor patio, bedroom, dining room or living room. Decor for the store includes a concrete picnic table in the outdoor patio room, a long mahogany table in the dining room, a '60s vintage graphic-pattern rug in the bedroom, and a flat-screen television (which plays movies via a Netflix subscription) and a Hans Wegner couch in the living room. Some of the furniture is used to merchandise apparel, while some offers seating space to customers. Three dressing rooms are situated in the rear of the store.
The outdoor patio room has floors fashioned from small black pebbles, while the rest of the store has floors of tinted concrete, inlaid with wooden dividers. Large, vinyl posters of either trophies or books on shelves are attached to the walls to heighten the ambience of suburban hominess. There is also a blown-up picture of Kolbe's family circa 1976, with the brand manager's father and uncle both happening to be wearing Penguin shirts.
"Original Penguin comes from the suburban life of the '50s, '60s, and '70s-the era when golfers dressed like golfers and master bowlers were on television every Saturday," said Kolbe of the store's appealingly kitschy motif.
Men’s apparel is merchandised throughout the store, while the back wall of the store is devoted to footwear. Women’s apparel will be added to the store this spring.
Apart from this first retail venture, Original Penguin is wholesaled to about 350 doors across the country, including Barneys, Bloomingdale's, American Rag, Fred Segal, Urban Outfitters and Vice. Originally introduced in 1955 by Munsingwear, the brand was acquired by Perry Ellis International in 1996 and relaunched for spring '03.
Original Penguin’s positive reception from retailers and consumers is because of a number of astute marketing decisions, according to Kolbe, who expects to have 500 doors by the end of next year. First, the label is not denim-driven in a market that is awash with denim. Rather, the pants are chinos or geeky plaids, shirts are preppie pastels or patterns, zip-front jackets are crisp poplins with appliqué stripes, and brimmed tennis hats are straight out of I Spy, the 60s show on intelligence-gathering starring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp.
Additionally, the line boasts sharp price points, with knit shirts, for example, pegged at $45. At Atrium, pricing was key to the success of the line last spring, according to buyer Alison Mangaroo. "Price points on tops were low and the tops work really well with denim, which is fifty percent of our buy," she noted.
Munsingwear was founded in Minneapolis in the late 1800s as a producer of men’s underwear. During World War II it prospered with government contracts for flight suits and other gear. It got into shirts for golf- and tenniswear in the '50s, as golf and tennis became more popular with the public. Bob Hope and Arnold Palmer were two well-known figures who sported the ubiquitous Penguin logo, developed on a whim by a Munsingwear salesman who bought a stuffed penguin at a New York taxidermist. The company thrived on its core Penguin business through the '50s, '60s and '70s, and continued making golf shirts into the' 90s, before being sold to Perry Ellis International in '96.
The brand's heritage is an important part of the marketing strategy, according to Kolbe, who noted he has two important customers: those who remember the brand and have a distant association with it, and those who buy it in thrift shops or on eBay. For that reason the company is re-creating some of the most popular styles from decades past and creating new items around them.
"You have to celebrate your heritage as a starting point, then go beyond that," explained Kolbe. But we are distancing ourselves from retro, which we see as a fleeting fashion. Penguin is a classic that is more style-driven than fashion-driven. "
Kolbe said he would consider opening more stores, but noted, "We are not looking to roll out store after store. And this first store will not be a Fifth Avenue loss leader-it's going to make money:"