Bodily Retail Shops Gasoline Development at Southern Tide

Southern Tide is a far more mature model than it was in 2016 when faculty scholar Allen Stephenson created a colourful polo shirt with a skipjack fish as its brand.

However that polo with its distinctive brand shortly discovered followers and Stephenson was in a position to department out right into a wider Southern-skewed sportswear assortment that finally caught the attention of Oxford Industries, which bought the corporate for $85 million in 2016.

Southern Tide is a part of Oxford’s portfolio of “comfortable, upbeat way of life manufacturers,” that features Tommy Bahama and Lilly Pulitzer, and is housed in its burgeoning “rising manufacturers” division, which encompasses the Beauford Bonnet Co. and Duckhead, amongst others.

Over the previous 4 years, Southern Tide has been on a progress spurt beneath the route of chief government officer Carey Ann Campbell. She joined the corporate in 2020 as vice chairman of direct-to-consumer and was elevated to the highest submit a yr later.

“At that time, we had been 80 % wholesale — we had one retailer. So it actually was about coming in and constructing that direct retailer channel,” she mentioned.

To this point, so good. Southern Tide operates 33 shops throughout the nation and from 2022 to 2023 alone, expanded its retail footprint by 250 %. Twelve shops opened in 2024 and the plan going ahead is to proceed so as to add to the fleet, with eight to 10 items a yr anticipated in 2025 and past, Campbell mentioned.

“We’ve had a reasonably considerate strategy with shops and retailer progress, utilizing lots of information on who our buyer is, after which discovering locations the place they’re,” she defined. “However the magic that occurs with our shops is about discovering that buyer of their comfortable place and connecting them with our model so it creates this emotional connection to our product and our model.”

Though Southern Tide is ostensively a Southern model centered round a coastal way of life, Campbell mentioned it has turn out to be greater than that over the previous 18 years.

“We now have a extremely robust presence within the Northeast,” she mentioned. “We’re in Nantucket, Chatham, Mashpee, [Mass.]. We opened Sag Harbor, [N.Y.], not too long ago. There’s one thing actually simplistic about that sense of coastal ease and we’ve discovered that it’s nearly that lifestyle.”

However the shops don’t need to be close to the water to succeed, she harassed. A boutique inland in Cary, N.C., is performing effectively and there are plans to open a unit subsequent yr in Scottsdale — which is nowhere close to the coast. “It’s about wherever any person is relaxed,” she mentioned.

Direct-to-consumer now accounts for simply over 50 % of the corporate’s total gross sales and quantity on this channel has greater than tripled since fiscal 2022. However that doesn’t imply Southern Tide is popping its again on wholesale.

“We now have unbelievable wholesale companions like Dillard’s and Von Maur and, I’ll say this, Dillard’s will get actually excited once we open a retailer as a result of it lifts their enterprise,” she mentioned. “Wholesale stays a essential part of our enterprise and it permits us to succeed in prospects we’d by no means have the flexibility to succeed in as a result of they aren’t strolling into our shops. So we are going to proceed to foster these relationships and develop there as applicable. We’re making an attempt to be nice at each. And I do suppose as we turn out to be higher retailers, we turn out to be higher wholesalers.”

Inside its personal shops, Southern Tide has been in a position to create an surroundings that really expresses the model ethos. And starting in 2025, the corporate will work with Kramer Design Group, recognized for its design work for Alexander Wang and Kate Spade amongst others, to create a template for future shops supposed to emphasise the soul of the model and its coastal aesthetic.

Whereas the corporate’s bodily attain has expanded over the previous few years because it aggressively provides shops, Campbell mentioned the design route of its assortment has remained intact. “I wouldn’t say that we’ve modified our aesthetic, however we have now to consider it in another way,” she mentioned. “We’ve turn out to be higher wholesalers and have actually tightened the product to supply what the shopper is responding to and what suits in our shops. So there’s actually been an evolution of the product in that facet, however not essentially the aesthetic.”

Whereas Southern Tide began as a males’s-only model, ladies’s now accounts for 25 % of gross sales and is considered as a possibility. “We now have some work to do to proceed to develop that class of the enterprise,” she mentioned, “however we’re happy with the outcomes up to now.”

In males’s, the Skipjack Polo stays the hero product together with the favored Intercoastal pant and Brrr-die brief. In ladies’s, the Leah and Caroline shorts are well-liked and the model’s efficiency attire are additionally robust, Campbell mentioned.

Wanting forward, she mentioned there are “undoubtedly alternatives for us to develop and develop in different areas and I feel you’ll see a bit of little bit of that coming sooner or later.”

As well as, the corporate is wanting into including extra third-party manufacturers to its shops. It presently has some licensees in merchandise resembling dwelling, and Campbell mentioned there’s “no have to reinvent the wheel” on different classes the place there are already “nice manufacturers doing nice issues” that would finally be provided within the shops.

And whereas the lens could also be centered on bodily retail, the on-line enterprise additionally stays a precedence, Campbell mentioned. “We view our e-commerce web site as our flagship retailer — it’s our largest retailer — so we have now to speculate there as effectively. So we’re concurrently working with net improvement to make that have simply as seamless from a model expertise.”