Carhartt store coming to Tosa
Work clothing trendy with young people
Carhartt Inc., the century-old maker of rugged canvas overalls and other work clothing favored by trendy young people as well as carpenters and plumbers, will open a store in Wauwatosa this summer.
Carhartt has leased a 6,228square-foot space at the Mayfair Collection, HSA Commercial Real Estate, the shopping center’s developer, said Thursday. Carhartt will occupy a now-vacant store site just north of Old Navy.
Landing Carhartt is another positive sign for the popular, yearold shopping center, which already features Nordstrom Rack, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th. The center is to expand early next year with a second phase anchored by a Whole Foods Market.
For Carhartt, the Wauwatosa
opening continues a retailing strategy launched just six years ago.
The Dearborn, Mich.-based company, which dates to 1889, has long concentrated on manufacturing — a significant portion of it still in the U.S. — while leaving retail sales of its roomy jackets and triple-stitched logger pants to others.
In 2009, though, Carhartt waded into retail, opening a store in Portland, Ore. It proved successful, and others followed.
The privately owned company now has 16 shops. Eight more are to open this year, including the Wauwatosa location.
Carhartt’s generously sized clothing started being embraced by urban youth in the late ’80s. In 1994, a licensee called Carhartt Work In Progress began distributing across Europe, where it found a similar audience.
The tradesperson buying work clothes remains Carhartt’s target demographic and “makes up a very large percentage of our consumer base not only for the brand but also in our 16 stores,” Jamie Millar, vice president of retail, said Thursday.
While Millar said the market has “without question” grown to include trend-oriented young adults who buy the clothes as fashion, the company keeps careful watch over its blue-collar roots.
Any trendiness is an offshoot of Carhartt’s fundamental identity, he said.
“One of the interesting byproducts of having a core workwear brand that’s 126 years old in Carhartt is that we absolutely have attracted a customer who is younger, who is more fashion-forward, but who looks at the brand as quality, looks at the brand as a great value for the quality they’re buying,” Millar said.
Carhartt has opened a few of its stores in dense urban settings, including in Chicago’s Loop and its Wicker Park neighborhood.
But most, Millar said, are in places where, as at the Mayfair Collection, a customer can park his pickup truck near the front door.
Carhartt has some 4,900 employees, and remains in the hands of descendants of founder Hamilton Carhartt.