Like Burberry and Aquascutum before it, heritage British brand Jaeger dusted off its fussy image and hit the catwalk with
a designer collection under the Jaeger London brand.
And as the brand, celebrating 125 years in womenswear and menswear in 2009, completes a makeover that has been in the works
for the past five years, it also is ramping up its brand extensions through a combination of in-house and licensed operations.
The latest to hit the stores is the Jaeger Home collection of luxury bed linen, bedspreads, throws and cushions. Premium priced,
it is being sold in the London Regent Street store, online at http://www.jaeger.co.uk/ and in high-end department stores, including Harrods and Fenwick.
Home joins existing brand extensions of footwear, jewelry and accessories, fragrance and gifts and optical frames. The new
Home collection is not a licensed deal, rather it has been executed in-house. But chief executive officer Belinda Earl says
the potential for licensed brand extensions for the business is huge. "Our aim is become a true lifestyle brand, and with that there is a huge potential for licensing. We have experience of manufacturing
and retailing ourselves, of franchise partnerships and of wholesaling and licensing—so we can apply any business model." Earl, who joined the business in 2004, was previously chief executive officer of Debenhams, where she was closely associated
with the launch of the Designers at Debenhams initiative. Her repositioning of Jaeger has seen the creation of the edgy, younger
Jaeger London and the luxury Jaeger Black to sit alongside the Jaeger mainline, aiming to bring new customers to the brand
while retaining Jaeger stalwarts. The Jaeger heritage—including reworking archive pieces—the use of noble fabrics and quality
are keynotes across the business.
Belinda Earl
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The new positioning is paying off with steadily increasing performance for the business owned by U.K. fashion entrepreneur
Harold Tillman. Sales for the year to February 2008, the latest available, were £82.2 million ($117.3 million), up 16 percent
on the previous year. EBITDA was up 22 percent to £6.1 million ($8.7 million). The key license deal is a longstanding partnership for optical frames with Continental Eyewear. A fragrance license was launched
in 2007 with Aspects Beauty, but this has since been brought in-house. "We are looking at what other categories there are
and seeing what opportunities there are for us to expand and grow the business," Earl says.
Driving the existing sunglasses collection and a launch into lingerie are on Earl's wish list, together with more accessories
and gifting.
Jaeger has 130 stores in the U.K. and Europe, plus Montreal in Canada; Santiago, Chile; Taiwan; and Korea. Its franchise partner
in Kuwait, Speciality Fashion Group, has stores in Kuwait, Dubai and Bahrain, and more are planned. In Japan, Jaeger has almost
20 stores and department store concessions.
"Our focus has been on repositioning the brand in our core market," Earl says. "Now we are looking at how to take that into
other brand categories and territories."
