Yohji Files For Bankruptcy Protection, Finds Investor

[cjbreed]

But in fairness Y made the cardinal mistake of too many fixed assets.

They opened huge stores in too many big cities and small cities (London OK but Antwerp wtf?!) without the advertising/sales to support them.

Look at CDG, a much MUCH bigger brand but they only have what? A few flagship stores and the rest are all pop ups which open and close in months to avoid long term fixed contracts. Even the fixed stores usually sell a host of other brands to appeal to a wider customer base and get more asses through the door. In contrast, I don't think I've ever been in a Y store with more customers than staff...

I'm not familiar with Japanese bankruptcy filings, but if this forces a restructuring of the company and sells off the stores to pay creditors it can only be a good thing.

i feel like he also had too many lines. diluted his brand maybe. i dunno. works for some but not for everyone. and overexpansion kills lots of businesses that otherwise have a solid foundation/business model. fuckin sad no matter what...

[Fade to Black]

CdG's reach in terms of overexpansion beats that of YY's by far. Their store is littered with plastic bags of white t-shirts with the parfum/dover street market logo available for sale...it was pretty disheartening and I couldn't stay in there for longer than 5 minutes.

I think the one thing that really sank this ship was artistic integrity, sad to say.

[cjbreed]

CdG's reach in terms of overexpansion beats that of YY's by far. Their store is littered with plastic bags of white t-shirts with the parfum/dover street market logo available for sale...it was pretty disheartening and I couldn't stay in there for longer than 5 minutes.

I think the one thing that really sank this ship was artistic integrity, sad to say.

i was thinking about CdG right as i posted that and you are right. but its not overexpansion if it doesn't bankrupt you.

[agentred]

CdG's reach in terms of overexpansion beats that of YY's by far. Their store is littered with plastic bags of white t-shirts with the parfum/dover street market logo available for sale...it was pretty disheartening and I couldn't stay in there for longer than 5 minutes.

I think the one thing that really sank this ship was artistic integrity, sad to say.

I can't really agree with this.

You're right that CDG's brand is completely diluted. But it makes them a lot of money, they don't have to advertise when they can team up with the Rolling Stones and have an instant buyer base. Same thing with Speedo and The Beatles and all the collabs : Low costs on advertising and manufacturing, the same high revenues.

In contrast, YY tried to do the same thing but it wasn't successful. Look at the Y-3 Adidas label, those things are skankier than skank.

YY and CDG are both in it for the bottom line, no exceptions. Any large fashion house is, really, some are just more successful than others.

[mononon]

yeah, i think both CDG and YY are somewhat overplayed...mainly due to the YYxAdidas Y3 and play CDG lines, which are both terrible and are based on hype, especially since both are more affordable to the general mass. That being said, if anything Y3 helped Yohji since it helped him gain more of a based since they sell them at more mid level stores...etc. then again, y3 and cdg play are faked like no other

[jcotteri]

I can't really agree with this.

You're right that CDG's brand is completely diluted. But it makes them a lot of money, they don't have to advertise when they can team up with the Rolling Stones and have an instant buyer base. Same thing with Speedo and The Beatles and all the collabs : Low costs on advertising and manufacturing, the same high revenues.

In contrast, YY tried to do the same thing but it wasn't successful. Look at the Y-3 Adidas label, those things are skankier than skank.

YY and CDG are both in it for the bottom line, no exceptions. Any large fashion house is, really, some are just more successful than others.

Y-3 is extremely successful... Hence why Adidas Japan helped broker the new deal..

[Avantster]

I can't really agree with this.

You're right that CDG's brand is completely diluted. But it makes them a lot of money, they don't have to advertise when they can team up with the Rolling Stones and have an instant buyer base. Same thing with Speedo and The Beatles and all the collabs : Low costs on advertising and manufacturing, the same high revenues.

In contrast, YY tried to do the same thing but it wasn't successful. Look at the Y-3 Adidas label, those things are skankier than skank.

YY and CDG are both in it for the bottom line, no exceptions. Any large fashion house is, really, some are just more successful than others.

If you're going to talk about 'large' fashion houses we should consider that size is relative and compared to YY inc, houses such as Marc Jacobs, Lanvin, Dior have easily more than five times the turnover. A conglomerate like LVMH has 250 times more. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how marginal some of the designers we love are.

[Faust]

/\ Exactly. When people say Rick is big, for example, I always think, compared to whom?

[agentred]

If you're going to talk about 'large' fashion houses we should consider that size is relative and compared to YY inc, houses such as Marc Jacobs, Lanvin, Dior have easily more than five times the turnover. A conglomerate like LVMH has 250 times more. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how marginal some of the designers we love are.

You're exactly right though, think of it this way: Lanvin has five times the turnover and far less stores. On the other hand, Dior has more stores, but it can afford to build a flagship in every major city because it has the turnover.

Y tried to do both and failed, if it wasn't a major fashion house it shouldn't have tried to spend like one!

[Fade to Black]

Valid points in the above few posts since my last - it's all relative...and I'm not sure how much this factors into the entire picture, but I also wonder if the downfall of Yohji's business has to take into consideration his refusal to cut corners like so many other big(ger) fashion entities have. The guy was really pushing hard with top of the line fabrics and utilizing maximum fabric surface area for his pieces (and i don't just mean in terms of the volume of a piece - with the way some of his stuff is constructed it really is requiring more handwork and material). Except he didn't have a trademark global accessories branding strategy to keep him afloat - i get the sense high end "clothes" alone are a loss everywhere. So I'd assert that it's not so much YY wasn't a high end fashion house but rather he wasn't linked in any way to a much larger conglomerate with diversified revenue branches at disposal to keep the machine running.

[Faust]

FtB, I think the point was not that he wasn't a luxury house, but he was just not big enough. It's not Chanel. He failed at some things that others succeeded at - perfume - fail, couture - fail. I am not saying it's his fault. Anyway, he is retiring a very wealthy man - I wouldn't feel bad for him personally. We'll see what the future holds for him.

[agentred]

Anyway, he is retiring a very wealthy man - I wouldn't feel bad for him personally. We'll see what the future holds for him.

That's something that always gets me, how ballin' are the Japanese designers compared to their Western counterparts?

I would assume they're richer because even though they don't have as high sales they still have a larger amount of capital in the company, whereas Western designers depend on private equity investors/existing infrastructure. So, for instance....

Nigo > Marc Ecko
Juna Watanabe > Marc Jacobs
Rei K > Vivienne Westwood

Amirite?

[Faust]

I don't know - the numbers are top secret. I am sure they are all a-Ok.

[jgan85]

sad..
$76m debt is a huge mountain though
________
JEEP CHEROKEE (XJ) HISTORY

[Fade to Black]

Juna Watanabe > Marc Jacobs

insightful analogy, this particular one was dead on.

Junya can't be balling that much though...without the Comme umbrella. Who's actually buying his stuff? Unless he's like the designer equivalent of those under-the-radar tycoons quietly amassing a fortune whilst unassumingly going out in nondescript clothing and presence.