Gramicci is heading into OR Summer Market with an all new management team, designer, and product line. According to Marty Weening, Gramicci’s new president, the team is 90% new, with Sarah Mark heading up the design team and Catherine Nyberg as director of marketing. Weening, who took over the brand seven months ago (shortly after the Buxbaum Group acquired the brand), also re-structured the sales team, which will be 80% in-house and 20% independent reps. Michael Donovan is heading up the Western regional sales and Mark Robinson is heading up Eastern regional sales. Jeff Kelly is running the Northeastern region.

Weening has a long history in the apparel and fashion industry. He was brought on board by the Buxbaum Group as a consultant to conduct an assessment of the Gramicci brand, which the company had just purchased. While he did find that brand had declined slightly in the past two years, it still had a considerable amount of consumer recognition. Weening decided to take over as president and was charged with the task of bringing Gramicci back to the level it was at during its prime in the mid- to late-90’s. In just over 12 weeks, Weening actually was able to bring a portion of Gramicci’s new design language to OR Winter Market. Now the company is working at re-positioning itself at Summer Market.

“I identified the brand as kind of being the Grateful Dead of the OR market,” said Weening. “It has this washed-out, rugged, certainly not ordinary feel to it. Mike Graham, the original founder created this garment died apparel company. And I felt that staying true to the heritage, which I felt was the chief equity of the brand, was the most important thing and this was the strongest connection to the customer.”

The first objective undertaken was to stabilize its sourcing platform. Previously, Gramicci was primarily a U.S. manufactured brand, but three years ago, the company shifted production off-shore to a third party. Shortly thereafter, the brand fell on financial difficulties and both quality control and on-time delivery fell. Weening traveled to four different continents and worked quickly to re-structure Gramicci’s sourcing platform. The company also instituted more stringent quality control and accurate sizing safeguards. On-time delivery has also been addressed. Since he took over, Weening said that the company has gone from 60% to 70% on-time and complete deliveries to 96% of orders. With better vendor relationships, and a more stable ownership behind the brand, the entire company is expecting to be able to repair any damaged retail relationships and re-build the brand.

The company still has many steps to take, but is well on its way to a complete restructuring. So far, the new lines have been well received by many retailers, and the company is re-building its dealer base quickly. Under the new team, Gramicci increased the brand’s business by more than 40% and was able to bring back 35% to 40% of its original customer base that was lost due to its shipping and sizing issues. In addition, the company opened 60 new accounts.

“At OR Winter Market we had to beg for a 15-minute appointment with one of our key customers, and we begged,” said Weening. “They ended up spending the good part of three hours with us and placing a considerable order.”