A heritage of hip, happy & hippie

The party looked straight out of Woodstock: the location, the ambience, and some of the dresses that the women wore. There were two giant videos that showed images from the last 40 years — the fashion, the music, the icons, the cultures and the counter-culture that the 1960s spawned.

The occasion: To celebrate 40 years of the fashion brand Esprit.

The place: Ratingen, Germany.

Rati-where?

Ratingen is about 10 kilometers from Düsseldorf; it’s a small industrial town famous for its alt beer — and Esprit. The fashion company’s headquarters are located here, in a glass-and-steel complex displaying the brand’s iconic stencil-effect logo  —  the triple-bar “E” of Esprit contrasting against a bright red buttress.

If you’re one of the people who thought Esprit was a French brand — German, Canadian, Hong Kong or an American company — welcome to the club. Esprit doesn’t publicize its nationality and that’s an intentional move. Executives say they are proud that people don’t associate the brand with one country, but when pressed for an answer, they concede that the roots are “California” — not American, but California,  with its very West Coast feeling and attitude.

Esprit started in San Francisco, where everything seemed to start in the 1960s anyway. It was 1964 when Susie Russell, a 20-year-old aspiring fashion designer, spotted a hitchhiker on her way to Tahoe City. She was driving a Beetle; this guy standing by the side of the road was “clean but rugged,” so she stopped her car and he hopped in (back in the ‘60s, hitchhikers weren’t all that weird — they were just people who needed a ride). He was an East Coaster named Doug Tompkins, who wanted to try out for the ‘64 Winter Olympics ski team but ended up trimming trees instead.

That same year, Susie and Doug got married.

Five years later, they started a clothing brand that would later evolve into Esprit de Corps (or “team spirit”). Susie was enamored of the European style (baby-doll dresses were a big thing back then, as they have been in the past few years now) and she took care of the creative side while Doug did the financial side.

Like true hippies — Susie was the kind  who went barefoot — they first sold their products from the back of a Volkswagen van, and even at the outset they were committed to being a socially responsible company.

By the 1980s, Esprit was a global brand with $800 million in sales.

I remember that in the ‘80s, Esprit was the pasalubong of choice for Filipino teenagers. Whenever somebody went abroad, you asked for an Esprit to bring home — it had to be an Esprit shirt, an Esprit canvas bag paired with Tretorn tennis shoes. I remember having those shirts with the Esprit logo emblazoned on the front in different colors. My sister and I were such fans, we would fight over the shirts and bags when shopping at Cinderella for Esprit.

Then and now, Esprit has always been about attitude: fresh, young, easygoing and hip — and sometimes with just a hint of the hippie-ness as the trend has come around yet again.

“Esprit is styled for the enjoyment of life, it’s fashion for real people,” says Esprit president Thomas Grote at the briefing of lifestyle journalists from Asia, South Africa and the Middle East in Ratingen. “We always want new styles but not over-styled. We are clean and wearable. We are the Prada for the average people. Esprit is high quality for a decent price.”

Esprit’s target market is very broad since it hinges its styles on a feeling and an attitude.  Its products are wearable by anybody from teens to people in their 20s to even 50s.

Their designers, says Grote, have the 28-year-old woman in mind. “It’s the most aspirational age,” he says. “In your early 20s, you’re still looking forward to having more money, more freedom. In your 40s, you’re looking back at your 28th year.”  

‘Fashion is a fresh-flower business’

Thomas Grote has the best metaphor for fashion: “It’s a fresh flower business.” That’s why at Esprit, the year is not divided into four seasons, but in 12. The designers in Ratingen explain that it takes two to three months to develop the monthly lines, which then stay in the stores for only a month. 

This fast-paced, always-on-your-toes business model is unique to Esprit. One which, according to Wolfram Hail, president for Esprit Asia Pacific, “drives our staff crazy. It’s a very demanding system” but it also protects the brand from getting knocked off. Who wants to copy last season’s designs anyway? 

Wolfram has worked in the retail business around the world all his life, the last one with Hugo Boss before he joined Esprit a year ago. Now based in Hong Kong, he says that once a month in the Hong Kong stores, “We start working with 80 people at 10 p.m., take down everything and the new merchandise comes out. This takes four to five hours. When I go home, maybe at 2 a.m., 10 to 15 people go to the office, where three graphic designers put together a merchandising guide. By 10 a.m. the next day, everything gets uploaded on the Internet. We expect that the stores around the region have it up two days later in their own stores. This way we instill consistency. It’s a mega update once a month and a refresh every two weeks.”

In the Philippines, Esprit is exclusively distributed by Cinderella since 1983. VP for merchandising Richie Santos, a third-generation retailer in the family-owned company, practically grew up with the brand.

“We buy the new merchandise in the first week of the month,” he says. “Right now we’re buying for January already. In Manila, the ladies’ collections make up 70 percent of the sales.”

Esprit and EDC  by Esprit have 16 stores in Metro Manila — some free-standing, some within Cinderella stores — and the flagship is located in Glorietta. Richie says the challenge for them is in picking what collections to highlight since “not all our stores are as big as 900 square meters, but we get a sampling of everything. Next season, we’re going to start carrying Esprit Sport.”

The brand is divided into several divisions:  Casual, EDC by Esprit, and Collection. In the autumn-winter collections, Esprit Collection goes across the world for inspiration with patterns including florals, geometrics and oversized motifs. Flowing, voluminous tops and dresses are accented in the waistlines, while jewel-studded necklines define a glam understatement.

Esprit Casual takes inspiration from Marlene Dietrich with wide-cut trousers and flared pants. Prints are reminiscent of watercolors, woodcuts and pen and ink drawings. EDC by Esprit — the youngest-looking of all the brands — experiments with innovative washes in its jeans. For tops, Lurex, foil and glitter prints produce subtle metallic effects and volume is reduced.

Big In Europe

The 1970s were growing years for Esprit — in 1971 the Tompkinses met Michael Ying, who established the Esprit Far East Group, and in 1976 Esprit started out in Germany under the name Esprit de Corp., and sales exceeded $100 million for the first time.

The 1980s were good, too, with the brand being established as one of the leading lifestyle companies globally. The Tompkins couple, however, divorced by the end of the decade. The first Esprit store in Europe was opened in Cologne, Germany, a little over an hour’s drive from Ratingen. The store was designed by Ettore Sottsass in the Memphis style, which would be the blueprint for all Esprit stores around the world in 1986.

The first half of the 1990s was disastrous, when a new head was appointed. He wanted the brand to abandon its casual heritage and turn it into a high-end fashion company.

Grote says, “The CEO, an American financial manager, was smart and intelligent, but he had no idea about the company. He wanted to turn this middle-market brand into haute couture. It was like Porsche suddenly started producing vans instead of sports cars.”

Within five years, the company lost 60 percent of its business in Europe.

In 1995 Grote went back to Esprit to run it with chairman Heinz Krogner. They streamlined the corporation, took out the old stylebook and essentially went back to what Esprit was at the very beginning: casual wear with a West Coast feel.

In the last 12 years, the brand has grown sevenfold. In Germany, next to the word “sex,” the most Googled word on the Internet is “Esprit,” and the online Esprit store in Europe gets 1.3 million hits every day. According to Wolfram, there are only three fashion brands with 100 percent awareness in the German market, which means that every German knows them — whether in big cities such as Berlin and Frankfurt or in the small towns — and these are Esprit Adidas and Hugo Boss.

Today Esprit is in five continents and more than 40 countries, with 3 billion euros in sales and 640 freestanding stores and over 1,000 franchise stores. More than 20,000 products are designed each year for 12 product lines for women, men and kids.

What’s the growth potential in the next 10 years? “If we would have the same market share in every European country as we have in Germany, our turnover will be three times as high as today, up to 10 billion euros. The potential is not an issue, we can grow between 10 and 15 percent every year but it’s important that we insist on a certain quality level. If you produce cheap garments, you can produce tons of them, but if you want to have special treatments to your washes and be ethical in the production you need to teach your factories.”

What about tying up with famous haute couture designers or getting high-profile models to endorse the brand? “We have no such plans,” says Grote.  “Our founder Doug Tompkins said, ‘We don’t want to pay celebrities to do it one time and then disappear.’ The H&M formula doesn’t apply for us. They are cheaper than we are. We have always been saying that we are a natural brand, we want to do our own designs, put our own handwriting. There is no strong designer brand that has a casual heritage like ours.”

Indeed, one of the most successful advertising campaigns of Esprit was “Real people campaign” in the 1980s. It was about real men and women, real casual clothes that you can wear every day to work or to school, and real quality you can depend on.

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In the Philippines, Esprit is exclusively distributed by Cinderella. Branches are located at Glorietta 3 (813-0107), SM Megamall (633-6375), Podium (635-6736), Shangri-La Plaza (634-2890), Robinsons Ermita (567-2779), Robinsons Galleria (632-9130), Greenhills (727-3308), Gateway  Mall (912-5991), SM North-The Block (442-0137), SM Manila (400-4705), Alabang Town Center (842-4189), Ayala Center Cebu (032-231-1555) and SM Mall of Asia (556-0832)

EDC by Esprit stores are located at Rockwell (756-5019), SM Megamall (633-1694) and TriNoma Mall (916-6184).