PHILLIPS-VAN HEUSEN
When the Right Move Is to Make Yourself Unnecessary
Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH) is one of the world’s great apparel companies. BOLTGROUP served as Agency of Record for a number of years, helping form their brand and marketing departments across four iconic American brands. The most important moment in that relationship was the transition, the point at which PVH had developed the internal capability to own what BOLTGROUP had helped create. The right move was to help make the handoff seamless—to leave PVH more capable than they were before BOLTGROUP arrived.What We Did
Brand Strategy
Brand Architecture
Brand Messaging Strategy
Brand Development
Corporate Identity System
Brand Stewardship
Brand Design + Communications
Visual Retail Merchandising
Retail Store Design Services
Brand Naming Strategy
Trade Show Booth Design
Promotional Design
Advertising & Design
Digital Design
Retail Packaging Design
Creative Art Direction
Brand Collateral Design
Graphic Signage Design
Visual Retail Merchandising
Brand Coaching + Training
Brand Extension
Photography
Awards
The Engagement
Across four of America’s most enduring apparel brands—Van Heusen, IZOD, Geoffrey Beene, and G.H. Bass—BOLTGROUP worked as a true partner: setting strategic direction, building brand infrastructure, and creating the systems and culture that would outlast any individual campaign.
Challenge
Phillips-Van Heusen entered the late 1990s as America’s number-one dress shirt maker with a portfolio spanning footwear, sportswear, and fashion apparel. The challenge was coherence.
Each brand had drifted from its core. IZOD carried the residue of its Lacoste years. G.H. Bass had made an ill-fated attempt to trade up-market and lost ground. Geoffrey Beene lacked a unified voice in outlet retail. Van Heusen’s marketing hadn’t kept pace with a repositioned product line. Across the portfolio, the consumer experience was inconsistent, the retail environments were underperforming, and the internal teams lacked the brand systems to operate independently.
PVH needed a partner who could build the infrastructure—the strategy, the standards, the language—that their own people could eventually own and operate.
Solution
Four Brands. One System of Thinking.
VAN HEUSEN
Repositioning at Retail + National Advertising
Working with Van Heusen Store Design and Marketing, BOLTGROUP contributed to the comprehensive redesign of their retail outlet stores—integrating marketing into architecture, developing store graphics, and creating event marketing packages. A national Fall 1998 ad campaign ran full-page color in Cosmopolitan, ESPN Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Glamour, Martha Stewart Living, and the New York Times Magazine. The two-story 30′ × 50′ trade show booth elevated the new brand direction to flagship level.
IZOD
Lifestyle Brand Extension + Retail Contemporization
BOLTGROUP helped IZOD become a true lifestyle brand by extending its equity from sportswear into bed and bath—an entirely new category. Packaging, point-of-sale, fixture design, and catalogue layouts for J.C. Penney ensured the equity transfer was seamless. In parallel, outlet stores were contemporized with mini “shops” within the store, marketing integrated into existing architecture, and a new full-store signage library developed.
Geoffrey Beene
Consistent Voice at Outlet Retail
As part of the overall Geoffrey Beene repositioning, BOLTGROUP worked with the internal store design group to capitalize on brand recognition and fashion-forward thinking. The engagement encompassed store environment, permanent graphics, colors, textures, and materials—including signage and event marketing—creating a single, coherent consumer voice where none had existed before.
G.H. BASS & CO
Brand Repositioning at 125 Years
Celebrating 125 years as a brand by rededicating itself to its founding pillars, BOLTGROUP worked with G.H. Bass and facilitated a full brand repositioning, developing new packaging, product labeling, pricing libraries, and seasonal in-store communications that communicated a singular voice—connecting every consumer touchpoint to the pillars of quality, classic, contemporary-appropriate design.
Results
BOLTGROUP’s work with PVH coincided with one of the most significant periods of growth in the company’s history. During and following the engagement, PVH grew from a challenged domestic apparel maker into one of the world’s largest fashion conglomerates.
Total revenues grew consistently across all divisions. Dress shirt growth was driven in large part by the Geoffrey Beene and Van Heusen brands. The IZOD brand, repositioned as a youthful all-American lifestyle brand, was acquired in a portfolio transaction valued at $220 million. G.H. Bass, operating more than 150 outlet stores at the height of the repositioning, became one of PVH’s most recognized heritage assets before being acquired by G-III Apparel Group for $49.2 million in 2013.
Perhaps most importantly: PVH built the internal brand and marketing capabilities to carry the work forward themselves. Which was always the point.
Key Metrics
- PVH Revenue at Start of Engagement (1997): $1.35 billion
- PVH Total Revenue After Strategic Repositioning (2006): $1.91 billion
- Year-over-Year Revenue Growth, Full Year 2006: 16%
- IZOD Portfolio Transaction Value (2021): $220 million
- G-III Apparel Group acquired G.H. Bass in 2013: $49.2 million