Growing a brand
Christopher Collins designs roll out to a national audience this spring
He’s been on “Project Runway,” the much-hyped “opportunity of a lifetime.” His sophisticated womenswear has been sold at Neiman Marcus. He’s been featured at GenArt, and countless fashion shows and fashion weeks across the country.
But for San Francisco designer Christopher Collins, the true opportunity of a lifetime came knocking on the door of his Sutter Street boutique this summer.
In September, he and business partner Erica Filanc Tanamachi, a lifelong friend, formed an equity partnership with fashion industry veteran Don Young, CEO of Merchant Coterie, creating the Christopher Collins Group. Young wants to introduce the 4-yearold San Francisco label to a national audience starting this spring.
“It was like we were handed the keys to the city,” Collins said in an exclusive interview “It’s just so exciting.”
In the past two months, the new partners have secured showroom representation in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles and Paris, inked a yearlong deal with bicoastal Michele Marie PR, and revamped the core womenswear line, which is being sold now for shipment in January. They’re also working on adding menswear and diffusion lines, which are lower-priced spinoffs.
“I get to now act as a creative director,” Collins said. “I give themes, overall design concepts, everything down to the reaction and what I want it to be.”
“That’s what we call elevating Christopher’s capability,” said Young, who is the new company’s CEO.
Young envisions Collins as “the next all-American design- er,” modeled on Michael Kors, whom he describes as “absolutely the benchmark.” The company has set an 18-month sales goal of $5 million — a conservative estimate that does not figure in international growth or e-commerce, which are also in the works.
Even before the agreement was formalized, Collins had met with Young’s extended network in New York — and was exhilarated by the idea of maintaining “a domestic feeling, but with global reach and opportunity.” The spring collection will be manufactured in Brooklyn, he said.
The “beautiful part of this new relationship,” Collins
said, is that he and Tanamachi, the company’s managing director, won’t have to leave the city that gave birth to the brand four years ago.
“I’ve left San Francisco before, but lasted about 2½ years,” he says of a stint designing for Tadashi and Dina Bar-El in Los Angeles. “San Francisco is where I am inspired, and where Erica and I feel our roots.”
Collins, 32, and his partner, JJ Beck, live in San Rafael. Tanamachi, 32, who is also a filmmaker, just welcomed a daughter with husband Jared and lives in Fairfax.
Both are alumni of San Francisco State University. Collins has a bachelor’s degree in fashion design and merchandising, and Tanamachi has a master’s of fine arts in cinema. They have known each other since kindergarten in Encinitas, near San Diego, and decided to start a company during a South America trip that included a trek to Machu Picchu.
‘Being real’
From the beginning, Collins’ designs have reflected the idea of “being real, being beautiful, having the clothes empower you,” but in the past year, Collins and Tanamachi have honed the brand’s essence to one word: “power.”
Merchant Coterie provides infrastructure and execution for brands and companies, as well as researching up-andcoming designers and tracking future market trends. Collins “came up on the radar,” Young said. “We’ve been following him and his story for a while.”
Young, who lives in New York but travels widely for work, e-mailed the pair, inquiring about stopping by, and showed up shortly thereafter. There was an immediate connection. “Ninety percent of the decision making came when we actually met Christopher,” he said.
“There are a lot of other contenders or designers out there who are also talented, but I think Christopher has a universal outreach on his talent, styling, taste level.”
Young’s interest in fashion dates back to his childhood in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he helped his mother at her boutique, he said. He moved to New York at 17 to study painting and illustration, but ended up in business school at NYU, then managing textiles and apparel for Samsung’s South and Central America regions.
He also worked with Victoria’s Secret and Jones Apparel Group, furthering his education in product development, branding and design, before striking out on his own with Merchant Coterie. Most of his clients cannot be mentioned because of nondisclosure agreements, but they range from mall fixtures to edgy New York designer Camilla Staerk.
San Francisco designer Julie Chaiken, whose contemporary womenswear is sold to hundreds of stores throughout the country, says separating the creative process from the business — manufacturing, sales and distribution — is crucial.
“In my experience, it’s actually impossible to be both the designer and the businessperson — it’s two different mind-sets. It sounds like (Collins) has found a way to just be creative.”
It’s a challenge Collins and Tanamachi are intimately familiar with, having handled nearly every aspect of the business themselves for the past four years, right down to pattern making. Collins spent a chunk of fall 2010 on season 8 of “Project Runway,” making it to the New York Fashion Week decoy show phase. His clothes were featured on the ABC Family show “Jane by Design” and have been worn by Jennifer Siebel Newsom and Stephanie March (“Law and Order: SVU”). This May, the line won the “Ahead of Fashion” challenge at the Keiretsu Forum Angel Capital Expo.
But television exposure and industry recognition didn’t translate into the kind of expertise they needed to take the business to the next level.
“A lot of people we talked to, we were teaching them the industry,” Tanamachi says, but Young immediately “got it.”
Crucial team
Chaiken says teaming up with a manufacturing partner is crucial to a line reaching the level of major department stores and distribution deals. Notable Bay Area designers including Margaret O’Leary, Erica Tanov, Tart and Timbuk 3 have succeeded and been able to stay in the area by staying at a manageable medium size, she said.
“It’s much harder to build a brand than it used to be,” Chaiken says. “It’s really quite incredible how many more brands there are in the ‘contemporary’ space, yet fewer stores.”
She praises Susie Tompkins Buell’s Esprit, which started in San Francisco and “stayed true to the quirky identity.”
“I would love to see a San Francisco designer have that kind of success.”
Collins and Tanamachi believe that the past four years have prepared them for the big leagues.
“I’m so grateful to this city,” Collins said. “We want to show that we’re in it to win it. This is about building a brand and a lifestyle.”