NOT IN ‘VINCE’IBLE

Founding designer loses firm in biz deal

As fashionistas take over the Big Apple during Fashion Week, designer Cynthia Vincent is feeling a little left out.

The Los Angelesbased designer, whose apparel, shoes and accessories sold under the Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent brand are carried in highend stores like Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus and Barneys — and embraced by stars like Heidi Klum, Kate Hudson and Beyoncé — lost her company this summer in a corporate deal gone sour.

Now Vincent, 50, who was also the founding designer and namesake for fashion brand Vince, no longer has any ties to the company she founded in 2003 and had hoped to expand by taking in an investor in 2012.

A deal with the Gores Group, a Los Angeles private equity firm that took a 51 percent stake in Vincent’s company nearly three years ago, ended up not in delight but in disaster — at least for Vincent.

It’s an ofttold tale when creative designer types — short on financing savvy — mix with Wall Street.

And while there is no clear sign of where blame lies, if anywhere, one thing is clear: A oncepromising designer and her company have prematurely parted ways.

In fact, the change in fortune happened quickly.

“I was literally driving to my first board meeting at the company when I got a call informing me that all of the people I’d done the deal with had left Big Strike and Gores,” Vincent said in a phone interview on Monday, referring to the Gores’ unit, Big Strike Inc., into which Vincent’s company was merged.

“I essentially became tethered to a PE firm where no one knew me,” she said.

The next two years were “volatile,” the designer said, but included some successes — like getting back into Bloomingdale’s and Neiman.

However, over the two years following the 2012 acquisition, Big Strike and Gores set “unrealistic sales goals without a strategic plan in place,” she claims.

As a result of missing sales goals, things got rocky between Vincent and Big Strike.

Vincent offered to buy back the 51 percent stake she had sold them. Big Strike declined the offer.

Earlier this year, Big Strike demanded repayment on its $3 million line of credit. Vincent didn’t have the cash.

Soon thereafter, in June, Gores Group sold Big Strike, and Vincent’s company, to Arlington Global Financial.

Vincent was offered severance, and her 16 employees were laid off.

Gores Group and Big Strike did not return calls and emails seeking comment.

One recent report had the label in the process of being shut down. Some dispute that.

But others say that the company has a new executive team that is actively developing the brand.

“My customers need to know I am no longer behind the product,” Vincent said. “There has been a lot of confusion about whether I was still involved.”

As the Spring fashion buying season kicks off at the conclusion of NYFW, Vincent’s last designs are being sold by Big Strike.