ATM is transferring onto its subsequent part, with founder and inventive director Tony Melillo now trying to understand his elevated necessities desires with the model’s new proprietor, Steven Madden Ltd.
Melillo began ATM with Public Clothes Co. in 2012 and used his initials — his full identify is Anthony Thomas Melillo — as its moniker.
The model started as a line of high-fashion T-shirts for males’s and girls’s at Barneys New York and parlayed that publicity into different merchandise and different shops in what Melillo described as a “nice interval” that lasted proper up till COVID-19 hit.
“I shaped a really profitable enterprise by actually hustling,” he stated. “We had a place of energy and needed to ensure we had been executed correctly in all these factors of distribution.”
However the model, identified for its luxurious informal seems at comparatively sharp value factors, fell right into a sort of limbo because the wholesale panorama shifted and the pandemic took maintain.
“My imaginative and prescient by no means received accomplished,” Melillo stated. “My purpose for ATM is clearly to be round for so long as doable and to develop with the market. The market modified. Wholesale grew to become, I received’t say a catastrophe, however fairly troublesome. And there have been many different channels that wanted to be touched on and invested in.”
Melillo spent two-and-a-half years on the lookout for a deal and landed with a pal and buyer — Steve Madden, whose namesake firm ended up shopping for the enterprise from Melillo and Public simply earlier than Thanksgiving.
“This particular person, Steve, slightly than Steve Madden Ltd., has change into the individual that I’m going to guess my playing cards on,” he stated. “It’s going to be a really huge, huge factor that basically is ready to create what my imaginative and prescient has all the time been.”
Melillo is signed on for 5 years-plus and stated the model goes to stay to its core idea of elevated important seems, however will likely be reaching out to extra folks with extra advertising and marketing and new shops. The model plans to open an outpost on the intersection of Mercer Avenue and Spring Avenue in New York by Might adopted by a Sag Harbor door for summer time.
De-Yan, the multidisciplinary design studio, will are available and assist refresh the model to place it for the longer term.
“I’ve all of the power and power on this planet to take this to so many alternative ranges and make it world,” Melillo stated. “And in our market we certainly have had extra folks come aboard since 2012. What I need to do once I say convey expertise into this enterprise is convey experimental retailers that really discover many issues different than simply the garments. It’s a must to draw these prospects in with quite a bit nowadays. It’s not nearly promoting garments off of a model.
“We are actually ready to develop X, Y and Z — Gen this one, Gen that one,” he stated. “That may’t be performed with out the correct advertising and marketing, with out the correct funding.”
The place the model had been restricted by way of manufacturing, Melillo stated it might now introduce new equipment, sneakers, luggage and different merchandise.
“The largest factor is the enlargement,” he stated. “The enlargement of our buyer. How are we reaching extra folks? What we’ve all the time had and by no means misplaced is a loyal buyer. What we haven’t performed is expanded that scope of individuals, that variety of folks. And that’s a advertising and marketing job.”