Calvin Klein’s Success
The Calvin Klein company was founded in 1968 when the designer set up a small coat shop in the York Hotel in New York City, funded with $10,000. Bonwit Teller later placed a $50,000 order which allowed a line of men’s and women’s coats created by the designer to appear in the New York City store.
In 1969, just one year later, Calvin Klein appeared on the front cover of Vogue magazine and was labelled as the “supreme master of minimalism”. His range of clothing grew and in 1971 he incorporated sportswear, lingerie and blazers. He was awarded the Coty Award for the first time in 1973 which he won for three consecutive years for his iconic womenswear collection. In 1977 the company’s revenue was estimated at $30 million thanks to his expansion into scarves, shoes, belts and sunglasses.
Klein was said to be making $4 million a year from the company and after the brand signed licenses for cosmetics, jeans and menswear the estimated revenue was $100 million. When the brand launched their jeans range they were able to boast sales of 200,000 pairs of the now famous skinny jeans in the first week of trading. Fortune magazine estimated the designer’s income at $8.5 million per year in 1981 after he created a designer-jeans craze by putting his name on the back pocket of his collection.
The designer jeans trend reached its peak in the 1980s and Calvin Klein continued to take advantage of the growth in sales by creating a range of designer underwear for men and women. The men’s underwear range was highly successful thanks to an aggressive an innovative marketing campaign featuring the popstar “Marky Mark” Mark Wahlberg, achieving a gross sales figure of $70 million in one year.
The company’s outstanding success continued and the sales reached a record high of over $600 million per year as the brand was sold in over 12,000 stores in the US. The designer’s income reached past $12 million on the back of this success.
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