After a year spent absorbing Knot Standard, Billy Reid is back in expansion mode.
Last April, the Alabama-based designer brand acquired the made-to-measure company and its eight retail showrooms. The goal of the purchase was to allow Billy Reid to reenter the custom business, a commercially successful offshoot of its core that was shuttered during the pandemic.
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The plan was to use Knot Standard’s technological expertise to create Billy Reid Custom product and add the designer’s ready-to-wear to the existing Knot Standard stores.
“It’s been an operational challenge,” said Jeff Zens, chief executive officer of Billy Reid Inc., “but we’ve gotten through a lot of that and we’re coming out on the other side.”
He said Knot Standard was “a tech company that built retail, and we’re a retail company that had systems and operations.” But it was more than just the back end that had to be integrated, Zens said. The showrooms themselves were converted to Billy Reid Custom, which was a major change for the Knot Standard customers.
“You’re taking a custom business that didn’t have a designer — that didn’t have really a brand — but was competing in an elevated price point custom world, and now all of a sudden you have Billy that has a perspective, a brand and a culture,” he explained. “So we kind of soft pedaled that a little bit because we didn’t want it to be too abrupt for the existing, Knot Standard customer. It’s not what they signed up for.”
But slowly, the staff in the Knot Standard stores has been introducing the Billy Reid, southern-flavored, Americana-skewed line to their customers.
This month marks a milestone for the combined company, Zens said. Billy Reid is sending out a custom mailer to all its customers, marking the first true marketing initiative since the acquisition.
“It’s still the polished tailored looks that the Knot Standard business was selling but it’s through Billy’s lens,” he explained. “You can tell that it’s Billy Reid through the art direction and that sort of thing. So it’s all systems go from a marketing and cross-selling perspective.”
If the effort is successful, it will also serve to introduce the “legacy Knot Standard customer” to Billy Reid ready-to-wear as well, Zens said. “That takes a little bit more coaching, because that’s not what people are coming for. They’re coming specifically for custom,” he said.
“It’s been a challenge to eliminate customer confusion,” he admitted, adding that Knot Standard’s highly promotional posture has also been eliminated.