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ECKO FINALLY DYING?


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Just came across the news story below. Seems like after killing Zoo York, Ecko might be well on it's way to killing itself as well.

http://www.nypost.com/business/47138.htm

ECKO UNHINGED

By SUZANNE KAPNER

May 25, 2005 -- Outwardly, Marc Ecko Enterprises appears to be riding high on the cultural boom that is hip-hop. Behind the scenes, though, the company is suffering from a series of management missteps that threaten to undermine its credibility.

A deal with rap artist Eve to sell clothes under the Fetish name has quietly unraveled, as has a joint venture with Target to market a line called Physical Science.

And plans to develop the newly acquired Femme Arsenal brand have been indefinitely shelved.

The company has been shedding employees — roughly 100, or 15 percent of the total — over the past six months, sparking talk of financial difficulties.

And Tommy Hilfiger, which had been in negotiations to buy the company last spring, abruptly walked away at the 11th hour, quashing an exit strategy for the founders just as the urban apparel market appears to be cooling.

Seth Gerszberg, the president of Marc Ecko Enterprises and one of its three founders, admits that the rapid growth of recent years has led to mistakes, but said the company, with projected sales of $421 million this year, is on stronger footing today than at anytime during its history.

John Daly, president of CIT Commercial Services, which has extended a $100 million credit facility to Ecko, said the company "is a client in good standing."

But interviews with a dozen former and current employees paint a picture of a company that bought into its own hype and relied more on smoke and mirrors than on sound business judgement.

Ecko is by no means alone in its struggles. The entire urban market, including names like Sean John, Rocawear and Phat Fashions, is undergoing a shakeout as the rapid growth of the past decade came abruptly to a halt last year.

Marc Ecko, a pharmacy-school dropout from Lakewood, N.J., and occasional graffiti artist, got his start in the early 1990s airbrushing T-shirts while a student at Rutgers University. He hooked up with Gerszberg, and the two, along with Marc's twin sister Marci Tapper, began making clothes, choosing the image of a rhinoceros as their trademark.

By 1998, the company was $6 million in debt, but a bailout by Gerszberg's cousin allowed the founders to retain control.

Three years later, a debt-free Ecko began branching out. The company founded Complex magazine in 2001; opened outlet stores in a joint venture with Casual Male in 2002; and launched new lines, including G-Unit with the rapper 50 Cent in 2003.

A Marc Ecko video game from Atari due in September holds the promise of turning Ecko into the cultural czar he has always aspired to be.

So confident was Ecko of its ability to keep diversifying that it paid Eve a $1 million advance in May 2004 to re-launch her Fetish line, after a deal with a previous licensee went sour.

By August, a team of designers was in place preparing for a fall 2005 launch, but they were fired in February, after the two sides came to loggerheads over the brand's image. Ecko is trying to retrieve a portion of its advance.

Troy Carter, Eve's manager, did not return several phone calls.

Meanwhile, the industry-wide slowdown in urban apparel was starting to take its toll on Ecko Unlimited, the company's bread-and-butter line. Gerszberg said he is planning for flat sales this year, with an expectation of a return to growth in 2006.

Despite those hiccups, the company continued to spend lavishly. It paid $8 million to buy out Casual Male from the outlet partnership, signed a multi-million dollar lease for a 275,000 square foot headquarters on 23rd Street on the Ladies' Mile and another one for a flagship retail store in Time Square.

All of that real estate helped to frighte

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  • 5 weeks later...
Quote:

i thought ecko died 3 years ago?

--- Original message by justaname on May 25, 2005 01:04 PM

I wish.....

but thanx to G-unit's line and Eve's Fetish line....

their still around.......

"They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, thatz why I look in the mirror every morning and realize how fly I am" -Killa Cam'ron

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  • 9 months later...

I dunno why someone would cheer the possible death of ecko. Dude basically paved the way for a vast vast majority of streetwear. he was the first person to really bring innovative and techincally advanced construction to urban or street based fashion.

maybe the stuff never appealed to some people personally, but they were either too young to know what ecko was in its heyday in the mid to late 90's, or simply were never interested in the market ecko targeted.

bottom line the company can be considered one of the fore fathers of streetwear, because the current streetwear market is very similar to what ecko was doing when they first started 10 years ago, and again why would anyone care whether someone they never knew failed or not

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I love how dudes are so quick to distance themselves from the "urban" but hold their streetwear close. Where do you think the streets are, buddy boy? Spring street is not the type of hood that breeds the very companies that you're supporting. Stussy didn't even start out as a street label, Supreme didn't pioneer the streetwear industry any more than Entenmann's pioneered the baking industry.

I can't say I've ever owned a piece of Ecko clothing, but I know my history, and Marc Ecko's been around the block a couple more times than anyone would care to learn about. The company's going to shit for real, but that's just the nature of the market and the sad consequence of some shitty decisions on Ecko's part.

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Besides the fact that you're a little misguided about the origins of streetwear and the fact that you seem to be one of those assholes who claims to love streetwear but seems to feel that he's to high-brow for the "urban" market? Didn't mean any offense, but your little quip about "maybe for the 'urban' market, but not dudes like me' line was fishy...

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Yeah, I guess that was a little condescending. I worded it poorly.

I associate Ecko with brands like G-Unit, Phat Farm, Rocawear, etc. Which I would call "Urban" brands. I know that's not exactly the best term, I just don't know what else to call it.

And trust me, I fully recognize the irony of the term "streetwear" being used described brands that sell expensive t-shirts in high end boutiques.

Regardless. I'm not really down with Ecko for what they did to Zoo York, and for the fact that none of their shit ever appealed to me.

I'm not too high-brow for "the urban market". That's just not my style. Also, I don't claim to be anything, especially street. But I do the things that "streetwear" is associated with: skateboarding, graffiti writing, etc.

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there's diff't angles to streetwear, and you could argue that one angle is 'urban' / hip-hop inspired, and another angle (among others) is skate-inspired, and that's how i interpreted what eastcoast was saying... probably that the streetwear stuff he's into is more skate-inspired or has more of that background, as opposed to the ecko angle and who picked up on it or who it was inspired by...

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Hey, sorry that I got all fierce based off of two lines- I'd just come off of a thread where someone made a really shitty, semi-racist comment that put me on red alert for shit-talking.

Ecko definitely at this point is tied together with really shitty brands of clothing.

But Marc Ecko started the company the same way that any up and coming streetwear label does these days, and he wasn't an outsider to graff/hip-hop culture either. You could actually respect the guy at first, in my eyes, for building a veritable empire out of his own desire to do whatever it is he set out to do. But, as I said, poor decision-making, greed, and fucking with shit you shouldn't ever fuck with (Zoo York) has gotten him into deep shit.

Good for him.

Anyways, sorry again. Next time my wheels hit the pavement I'll be sure to bomb a hill in your name.

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