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Designer Jamie Davidson’s Strong Suit? Vision

7 min read

Jamie Davidson thinks a lot about the future of retail. That’s not surprising: He’s a clothing designer and founder of Strong Suit Clothing, a men’s apparel company based in Little Rock.

The name of the company is self-referential: Davidson sees his strength — his strong suit — in his understanding of the burgeoning millennial market. He wants to exploit that understanding to grow his company, and he thinks he’s poised to do just that.

Strong Suit Clothing, launched in 2013 and incorporated in 2014, designs and makes clothing for men — suits, blazers, vests, tuxedos, trousers, shirts and ties. It uses fine fabrics and canvas construction to put men in suits at “an attainable price point,” $600. Canvas construction refers to the design of a suit jacket, one that employs a layer of canvassing material between the outer shell of the jacket and the inner lining, which helps the jacket conform to the wearer’s body. It provides a better, more elegant fit. Davidson calls it “old world” tailoring.

Davidson, 44, has a long history as a clothing designer and entrepreneur. He was one of the founders of clothing manufacturer Normandy & Monroe and later founded Tre Vero, a clothing and accessories label sold in Dillard’s. Both companies have closed, but both companies saw success, with Barneys and Neiman Marcus carrying the Normandy & Monroe line.

As for Strong Suit, it’s sold in almost 30 high-end retailers around the country, stores like the landmark Boyds in Philadelphia and Beecroft & Bull, a men’s specialty store with three locations in Virginia. In addition, Nordstrom is carrying the Strong Suit line online and in Nordstrom stores in Atlanta; Austin; Chicago; Nashville, Tennessee; Santa Monica, California; and Seattle, with stores in Dallas; Houston; San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; and Vancouver to follow in August, Davidson said.

And Davidson has remained stubbornly loyal to Little Rock, seeking to develop brands and businesses here that achieve renown far outside the state. For example, Normandy & Monroe — named for the Little Rock streets Davidson and his then-business partner Padgett Mangan grew up on — gained attention for selling its $325 windbreaker to customers like President George Bush, former President Bill Clinton and actors Kevin Costner, Robert DeNiro and Harrison Ford.

But it’s his vision of the future of retail that Davidson wants to discuss on this particular day, in Strong Suit’s offices on President Clinton Avenue in the River Market District, and what that vision means to his company. It’s a vision he has recently shared in talks at the 18th annual ICR Conference, an investment conference on economic and consumer trends that brings together representatives from private and public companies, and to a meeting of Nordstrom’s regional managers.

Low-end retailers, like T.J. Maxx and the dollar stores, are doing well in the current environment, but high-end retailers like Neiman’s and Saks aren’t. That’s because, Davidson said, these retailers aren’t prepared for the new customer, the millennial customer. They have failed to make the transition from the baby boomer consumer to the grandchildren of those boomers.

“You have 10,000 baby boomers a day retiring,” Davidson said. “And people don’t realize the scope of this. But that is going to be true for the next 19 years.”

These retired boomers no longer wear suits; even if they did, their closets are full.

The nature of shopping has changed as well, he said. “The last 20 to 25 years, where you introduce consumer credit into the marketplace, you had this huge wave of indiscriminate shopping. It benefited all retailers on all levels. People shop with much more intent now.”

These intentional shoppers, but particularly these millennials, “have completely different buying expectations and habits,” Davidson said. “They care about experiences more than stuff.

“Millennials are not saving their paychecks to buy Rolex watches. They’re saving their money to go on great vacations, and not just to Florida or the Grand Canyon. They want to go to Spain and Ibiza and Vietnam.

“They are saving their money for technology because that improves their lives and that’s how they consume their entertainment.”

Companies that want to sell to millennials must have not just a value proposition, a reason for why customers should buy their goods or services, but should instead be “a value disruptor.”

“All of these brick-and-mortar retailers are under the false assumption that what they are doing is necessary. Because it’s not,” Davidson said.

Shoppers used to visit department stores with their wide variety of goods “to discover something new. People don’t discover things in stores anymore,” he said. “They discover them on their phones and on their iPads.

“And if they discover something they like, they go to a store to shop but it is with intent. They’re not going to browse and discover.”

So now, customers visit stores seeking out specific items, not to browse, and that “negates the need for square footage. It puts a greater emphasis on how you speak to your customers,” Davidson said, which makes the effective employment of social media all the more important.

Retailers should focus on “creating a great experience because if you do that, you can sell people just about anything,” Davidson said.

That’s why he’s pleased with Strong Suit’s partnership with Nordstrom, which has begun to emphasize technology and outreach and which has a strong e-commerce component.

“They have been very forward-thinking in how they reach out to this customer,” Davidson said. Nordstrom, he said, has learned to communicate effectively with the millennial customer.

For its part, Strong Suit wants to take advantage of millennials’ desire for authenticity, transparency — their desire to have a clear conscience about what they’re buying — and value. “Our customer, there has to be a level of transparency there in that people don’t want to buy products that they feel like people were exploited to make them,” he said.

To that end, Strong Suit has sourced much of its manufacturing in North America. Its suits, for example, are made in Merida on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico; its shirts are made in Nashville, Tennessee.

But value remains critical, Davidson said. “I’d put the quality of what we’re doing up against anything that costs three times as much as what we do. And our customers recognize that, and I think that’s a big reason why we’ve gotten the traction that we’ve gotten.”

Davidson is also proud of Strong Suit’s made-to-measure component, “which is, essentially, customizing a suit,” fitting it to the customer and allowing him to choose fabrics and details.

Recent made-to-measure events in Nordstrom stores in Seattle and Chicago set records for the number of suits sold, Davidson said, with Strong Suit selling 60 suits in Seattle, the most Nordstrom had ever sold at one time. And at a made-to-measure event at a store in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Strong Suit sold 100 suits in one day.

Strong Suit, which has six employees in Little Rock, has raised $1.3 million in investment capital since it launched. “Everything that we’ve done, we’ve done it on that $1.3 million,” Davidson.

The company has no debt, he said. It had revenue of $700,000 in 2015 and is projected to gross $1.2 million in 2016.

Strong Suit is preparing to raise more money to expand its online business. And building brick-and-mortar stores is on the to-do list.

The designer isn’t high on the startup climate in Little Rock. “I think there is a lot of lip service paid to startups, but everybody I know that has a startup, they’ve gotten most of their money out of state,” Davidson said.

And developing a menswear label in Little Rock is a challenge. It’s a question that investors and those in the retail trade ask him: Why Little Rock?

“The fact of the matter is, I’m in Little Rock because it’s my home and I like it here and I’m stubborn. But starting a fashion business — I don’t think that there is another fashion label that’s building a national brand, a national profile, from Little Rock. And that is a challenge.”

So, again, why Little Rock?

And again: “Because I’m stubborn,” Davidson said. “I like the convenience of being here. I like the fact that I’m living in a house that I literally grew up in. That’s just what I want to do.”

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