A journey through the showrooms during New York Home Fashions Market found a raft of tactical and strategic shifts, new licensing ventures, and category entries.

• Having secured new licensees for Royal Velvet (Himatsingka for fashion bedding) and Cannon (Pem-America for fashion bedding, throws; Blue Ridge Home Fashions for down comforters) as DTRs with J.C. Penney and Sears Holdings end Iconix Brand Group is weighing expanding its fashion brands to home textiles, says VP Lauren Steinke.

Activewear brand Danskin is at the top of the list, but Iconix also is positioning Starter, Rampage, Material Girl, Mudd, Candies and Zoo York for licensing in the category. Among those brands, Candie’s is the only one that’s been licensed in the past for textiles.

“Danskin seems like it has legs because it has the activewear profile and from an esthetic standpoint soft pastels and earthy easy lifestyle. There are not many brands that speak to that,” says Steinke. “But we are not in a rush and we want the right partners even if we do just one deal to test the waters to see what this is about.” Meanwhile, Iconix has launched a Waverly Home DTR with Christmas Tree Shops starting with outdoor pillows, but eventually spreading to window treatments, bedding and other categories. Christmas Tree Shops previously sold home textiles under the Waverly Traditions brands using licensees including cushions (Morgan) and bedding (Ellery Homestyles). It’s also finalizing an agreement with Welspun for Waverly brand towels and continuing a DTR with Walmart for fabric.

“When we were coming out of DTRs, our first choice was to partner with really strong licensees who are known in the market for being able to handle these types of products and who know brands and have had the distribution we had in mind,” says Steinke.

• Licensees are broadening their businesses to both expand their online presence and hedge against an uncertain brick and mortar retail business. Bardwil Home, having lost a Tommy Bahama license for kitchen textiles and table linens to a DTR at T.J. Maxx, is moving into bedding (comforters, sheets and shams) for the first time. It will have its own Bardwil Home brand bedding this fall and add the Lenox label in spring 2020, says SVP Reed Raggio. In replacing Suntex as the bedding licensee for Lenox, Bardwil is expanding its current agreement with the company for towels, shower curtains and other products.

Meanwhile, Town and Country, with fresh funding from new owner H.I.G Capital, is broadening the licensing business for recently-acquired Home Dynamix and window treatments supplier Amalgamated Textiles. Home Dynamix has licenses forNicole Miller, Eric Carle, Elle Magazine, Christian Soriano for rugs, bedding and decorative pillows; two of them (Nicole Miller, Christian Soriano) will be extended into pet beds. Amalgamated is adding licenses for the first time, with plans for Nicole Miller, Christian Soriano, Ralph Lauren and Chaps draperies.

In addition, Town and Country is launching its ecommerce business, starting this summer with Walmart.com. The ecommerce program will start with KitchenAid kitchen towels, which that will be shorn of the embroidery found in department store versions and sold in three-packs instead of as single items, says Town and Country VP Judi Alexander.

London Luxury also expanded its license with Columbia Sportswear, which covers pillows and towels, to include bedding sets.

“We try to make up” the business lost with the closing or retail stores and changing trends.  People aren’t decorating their tables with table clothes and putting in place mats and runners so we have to look for new categories,” says Raggio.

Blue star Alliance, which acquired the Brookstone brand last fall, is adding home textiles to the licensing mix for the first time. London Luxury is readying towels, rugs, slippers and robes, while Town and Country will do travel accessories – a first for the company. The products are among the first licensed items created by Town and Country’s Airia Group, which is staffed with industrial instead of textile designers who are charged with bringing the company into new categories.

• The Sean Jean brand is returning to bedding with Pem-America, targeting a slightly older customer than the one Revman addressed with a line eight years ago. “The brand is 21 years old and the customer that was 16 or 17 at the time and buying t-shirts, is now in their mid-30s with more disposable income,” says Pem-America EVP Sam Glasnapp.
• Levinsohn will launch its New York Botanical Gardens bedding, decorative pillows and other products through 300 Bed Bath & Beyond stores and online in April as part of an exclusive that runs through year-end. It launched NYBG melamine dinnerware – salad and dinner plate and serving trays – through Bed Bath & Beyond in February.
• Martha Stewart formally unveiled plans for licensed textiles at her New York City studio with four different lifestyle collections (Bedford, Lily Pond, Perry Street and Skylands), each taking their cues from Stewart’s four homes. The event at Stewart’s studio featured her existing retailers, Macy’s and QVC, as well some new additions (Ross Stores and Bed, Bath and Beyond), which haven’t previously carried the Martha Stewart brand. Among Stewart’s licensees present were Safavieh (area rugs); JLA Home (ready-to-assemble furniture) and CHF Industries (window treatments).

Contacts:

Authentic Brands Group, John Erlandson, SVP Business Development, 347-344-6121, jerlandson@abg-nyc.com

Bardwil, Reed Raggio, SVP Sales and Merchandising, 646-368-6833, raggior@bardwil.com

Bluestar Alliance, Ralph Gindi, COO, 212-290-1370, rgindi@blestarall.com

Iconix Brand Group, Lauren Steinke, SVP Home, 212-597-4756, lsteinke@iconixbrand.com

Levinsohn, Adam Levinsohn, Pres., 212-885-1440, alevinsohn@levinsohn.com

London Luxury, Amanda Keller, VP Brand Strategy, 914-636-2100 x525

Pem-America, Sam Glasnapp, EVP, 212-481-2141 x127, sam.glasnapp@pemamerica.com

Town and Country, Judi Alexander, VP Licensing and Marketing, 646-898-0731, jalexander@tncliving.com