The story
Founded by Tommy Hilfiger in 1985, in Montreal.1
20th century
Tommy Hilfiger's career in fashion began in 1968, when he cofounded a clothing and record store named People's Place in upstate New York. Using $150 he had saved from working at a gas station as startup money, he oversaw the expansion of the company into a chain of ten stores. Despite meeting with initial success, People's Place filed for bankruptcy in 1977. In 1979, Hilfiger moved to New York City to pursue a career as a fashion designer, working on several different labels including Jordache Jeans.
In the early 1980s, he met Mohan Murjani, an Indian textile magnate hoping to launch a line of men's clothing. With Murjani's backing in 1985, Hilfiger debuted his first signature collection, which featured modernized versions of button-down shirts, chinos, and other classic preppy styles. The casual and youthful attitude of these first designs would remain a trait of the company's later collections. The new clothing line made its debut with a high-profile marketing campaign, which included a large billboard in Times Square by advertiser George Lois.
The Tommy Hilfiger brand left Murjani International in 1989, with Silas Chou instead providing financial backing. That year, Lawrence Stroll and Joel Horowitz, both former executives of Ralph Lauren, were hired as executives of the newly formed company Tommy Hilfiger, Inc., which had an initial focus on casual male sportswear.
The Tommy Hilfiger Corporation went public in 1992. After licensing Pepe Jeans USA in 1995, in 1996 Tommy Hilfiger Inc. began distributing women's clothing as well. By the end of the next year, Hilfiger had opened his first store in Beverly Hills, which was followed by a store in London in 1998. The company launched its bed and bath line in 1998.
Throughout the 1990s, the company's marketing division worked in tandem with the popular music industry, and as early as 1993 Hilfiger was an official sponsor for Pete Townshend's Psychoderelict tour.
In the early 1990s a baggier, less tailored menswear look came into fashion, and Hilfiger gave his clothes a more relaxed fit. As roomier styles with oversized logos became popular with hip-hop artists in the mid-to-late 1990s,
Hilfiger's style of clothing became both increasingly popular with the American "preppy" scene and as hip hop fashion, and when Snoop Dogg wore a Hilfiger sweatshirt during an appearance on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s; it sold out of New York City stores the next day. Hilfiger courted the new hip hop market, and rappers like Puff Daddy and Coolio attended his runway shows. The clothes were marketed in connection with the music industry, with collections often influenced by the fashion of music subcultures, and American R&B singer Aaliyah became the spokesperson for Tommy Hilfiger Corporation in 1997.
In 1997, the company sponsored Sheryl Crow's If It Makes You Happy tour. In 1999, it sponsored both Britney Spears'...Baby One More Time Tour. and Lenny Kravitz's Freedom tour.
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21st century
In 2001, women's intimate apparel was introduced. After sales and net income faltered in 2001, the company's sales in 2002 totaled $1.87 billion. Overall between 2000 and 2009, sales slipped from around $1.9 billion to $700 million. During the same time period, however, Hilfiger's European sales steadily rose to $1.13 billion. In 2003, Hilfiger executive Fred Gehring and Hilfiger decided to further invest in the brand's growing overseas audience by re-focusing on the brand's original style, "classic American cool," and designing the clothes out of New York City. Gehring also adapted the business model to suit European retail culture, pursuing partnerships with European department stores and with smaller boutiques, signing 4,500 of them in 15 countries. Hilfiger also strove to retain the designer brand exclusivity of the Hilfiger label by signing a deal to distribute the best-selling Hilfiger lines at Macy's only.
Hilfiger has endorsed products such as True Star, a fragrance, which was released in 2004 with Beyoncé Knowles as poster girl. True Star would go on to win a FiFi Award for Best New Commercial Fragrance. By 2004, the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation company had revenues of approximately $1.8 billion and 5,400 employees. In 2006, Tommy Hilfiger sold Tommy Hilfiger Inc. for $1.6 billion, or $16.80 a share, to Apax Partners, a private investment company. After the acquisition Gehring assumed control of the American headquarters of Tommy Hilfiger as well as Europe. Gehring and Hilfiger narrowed their focus in the United States to the profitable core sportswear line, and U.S. sales began to rise in 2010.
In March 2010, Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH Corp.) bought the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation for $3 billion, in a deal that was nearly seven times what PVH had paid for Calvin Klein in 2003. Fred Gehring, who launched Hilfiger's European division in 1996, assumed the role of Hilfiger's CEO. Daniel Grieder was appointed CEO of Tommy Hilfiger Group in July 2014. Former CEO Gehring was made executive chairman of Tommy Hilfiger Group and was appointed vice chairman of PVH.
In January 2015, Tommy Hilfiger debuted a digital sales showroom at its New York City headquarters, which the publication WGSN opined would "transform the traditional buying process." With plans to open showrooms in other cities, Hilfiger described the showroom as "an innovation of the order process with cost saving potentials along the whole value chain."
In August 2015, Gehring stepped down as Tommy Hilfiger Group's chairman, though he retained his role at PVH. Tommy Hilfiger remains the company's principal designer, leading the design teams and overseeing the entire creative process.
In 2020, PVH announced that as part of their animal welfare policy, the company does not use exotic skins and would be banning their use in Tommy Hilfiger collections when "our annual update of that policy is released."
In 2021, Tommy Hilfiger released their first genderless collection in collaboration with Indya Moore.
From Wikipedia’s article on Tommy Hilfiger (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3