Marquee Brands has a new digital-first play for fashion labels and has brought two former licenses back into the fold.
The brand management firm created Marquee-Direct, a platform to bring all e-commerce in-house and handle site design and development, merchandising, content creation and customer engagement. It also reclaimed its licenses for BCBGMaxAzria and BCBGeneration from Centric Brands, according to the latter’s bankruptcy court petition. Marquee, which maintains offices in New York City and Los Angeles, said it will continue to operate the brands’ wholesale and e-commerce business to “ensure seamless continuity.”
The new digital platform will help Marquee’s operating partners to grow while enabling it to scale through the addition of new brands. The platform already supports Ben Sherman, Body Glove, Dakine, and Bruno Magli, as well as Motherhood Maternity and Pea in a Pod, which Marquee acquired earlier this year under the Destination Maternity umbrella after a bankruptcy auction and now operates on a direct-to-consumer model. And with the return of the BCBG licenses, the BCBG Group will become part of Marquee’s new digital platform as well.
“BCBG has a strong 30-year brand heritage and a devoted customer base and the brands will benefit significantly from this transition. We are excited to have our hands on the wheel toward this next phase of growth and will be working closely with Centric to ensure a smooth transition,” Diane Behkor, BCBG’s senior vice president of brand management, said.
Jonathan Grellers, Marquee’s head of strategy and corporate development, said Destination Maternity experienced years of substantial losses with its “antiquated store-base model,” but has since turned a profit with positive cash flow under a direct e-commerce operational structure. That’s now the template for the two BCBG brands.
“Taking back the BCBG business and integrating it onto our Marquee-Direct platform with a heightened focus on product and our global partners will no doubt result in profitability that exceeds what could have been achieved through the prior license,” Grellers said.