Dive Brief:
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Kate Spade & Company is working on several new projects to expand its reach beyond handbags, including jumping on the athleisure wave, according to Women’s Wear Daily.
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The company shuttered its Kate Spade Saturday and Jack Spade stores in the new year and folded the lines in its existing stores.
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This activity is separate from recent announcements from designer Kate Spade herself, who sold her eponymous company to Liz Claiborne Inc. some eight years ago and has recently announced plans to launch a shoes and handbags line by the holidays this year.
Dive Insight:
Kate Spade & Company was busy in the first half of the year shutting things down, but now it’s revving back up. The move to athleisure is no surprise—the category is hot without signs of a cool-down—but the changes also include home goods, sleepwear and loungewear, and bridal.
These are all strong categories and is exactly what CEO Craig A. Leavitt promised the company would be doing when he discussed the Kate Spade Saturday and Jack Spade store closures in January: "We continue to focus on two axes of growth – geographic expansion and product category expansion. We are early in our journey as Kate Spade & Company, and we see a clear path to becoming a four billion dollar business at retail.”
The athleisure effort is in partnership with Beyond Yoga, a mid-priced, made-in-the-USA performance wear brand. Perhaps it was inevitable that Kate Spade would get into the game (who’s next?) but at some point the trend will become saturated, it will become less trendy to wear yoga clothes all day long, or women will get tired of seeing the same sorts of designs everywhere. Whether that happens in 10 months or 10 years though is hard to say.
