Renown
RENOWN: LEADING JAPANESE READY-TO-WEAR COMPANY
Renown is a Japanese clothing industry. In the domestic market, it is the leader in ready-to-wear. It also produces women’s underwear and stockings. The group’s philosophy is growth through the acquisition of important brands. Among these, the best known is Acquascutum (a historic English mackintosh factory) which joined the Renown stable in 1991.
THE COMPANY’S DIFFICULTIES
It recorded its twelfth consolidated operating loss: 1.5 billion yen. To stop the haemorrhaging of cash, the company got rid of unprofitable divisions, vacated its old offices in Harajuku, forced some 380 employees into retirement and, finally, offloaded poor-performing divisions to subsidiaries.
THE ARNOLD PALMER COLLECTION
The new Arnold Palmer collection was presented by the company as one of the key brands to return the brand to positive balance sheets. Back when his career was on the upswing, in the 1980s, Arnold Palmer was selling around 40-50 billion yen a year. Then, the Arnold Palmer line suffered a major downturn.
Although the items were substantially updated, Renown wisely kept the old logo, creating a vintage connection to the original brand. A surprising thing for an old-school clothing group such as Renown, is that a group of directly operated shops were also opened to create a brand presence. In Harajuku, the Arnold Palmer Premium Store recorded sales of approximately 30 million yen in the first month and other shops are averaging 10 million yen per month.
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