|
Rothman's is refashioned
|
 |
July 9, 1998: 3:23 p.m. ET
Doting grandson successfully revives founder's landmark clothing business
|
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - When his grandfather's famous men's clothing store Rothman's was going out of business 13 years ago, Ken Giddon was ready to liquidate its assets. Instead, he transformed it into a successful business.
"I didn't have a very close relationship with my grandfather because he lived in New York and I lived in Boston. But as I read more about him and spent a lot of time with people who knew him, I learned what a wonderful man he had been. And you know, I sort of got this urge to bring back the name," Giddon said.
A former currency trader, Giddon was short on fashion sense but long on business savvy, which made him a perfect candidate for running the family's fashion enterprise.
His grandfather Harry Rothman was the son of Russian immigrants who landed in New York like millions of others at the turn of the century.
In the 1920s, the industrious Harry began peddling clothes from a pushcart on Manhattan's busy streets. By 1926, he had earned enough money to open a store in Greenwich Village, where he pioneered a retail concept still popular today -- buying designer overstock and selling it with his own label for hundreds of dollars below designer prices.
"It became famous. He advertised in the New York Times and on radio. His famous slogan was 'How does Harry Rothman do it?'" Giddon said.
Harry Rothman did it by not pandering to shifting styles, a strategy that succeeded for decades until his customers grew old and the suits did, too. When Harry's health failed in 1985, his two daughters, including Giddon's mother, decided to retire the Rothman name.
"My father was aging, the customers were aging, and so we thought we were really closing the store," said Phoebe Giddon, Ken's mother.
Rothman, who died that same year, had warned his daughters against working in the "Rag Trade."
"He had taken on this business because it was one of the few avenues that were open to him in the early 1900s. He thought that although it was suitable for him because he was just an immigrant, he didn't want his American children to be involved in this kind of business," said Giddon.
The future of that business created controversy in the family. Giddon's aunt had no faith in Ken's retail skills and feared he might desecrate the family name with poor fashion choices. She only agreed to license the name after Giddon signed a 25-page promise giving her veto power over his moves.
"It was almost like a challenge to me -- that maybe I could make this thing work and maybe I could bring back the name and the reputation that my grandfather had," Giddon said.
With no money, he convinced a bank to lend him $200,000, based solely on his grandfather's credit with wholesalers.
At the same time, New York's fashionable Union Square neighborhood was undergoing a renaissance and Giddon was in the forefront.
"He's taken what was the legend of his grandfather's store, and turned it into a tremendous success and one of the most fashionable men's business stores in the city," said David Gmach of the Business Improvement District.
Giddon did it by redesigning the store and selling designer label suits -- still at a discount -- but costing as much as $1,000, focusing Granddad's bargain basement concept on an upscale clientele.
While Rothman's once was primarily a "price store," customers now come to Rothman's for fashion advice, according to Giddon. (197K WAV) or (197K AIFF)
The strategy paid off with the help of some funky advertising, skewering the "go-get-'em" ideals of Manhattan's power elite.
"You know, clothing isn't going to make you jump higher or run faster. So what we we're doing is creating this mythic super hero -- the Rothman's Man -- and he can do all these things. It was very easy to come up with the lines because we just thought about all the things that people in New York brag about," said Giddon.
Giddon himself deserves some bragging rights, as sales climbed from $1.5 million the first year to $6 million last year. He says Rothman's is turning a tidy profit.
"We're very proud of him. My father would have been extremely happy to see what has happened," Phoebe Giddon said.
-- from staff writer Kevin Gray
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
