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Apparel
News
Published
on May 28, 2004
Tee
Party: C&C Designers Drop In at FBI
For more than a year, C&C California designers Claire
Stansfield and Cheyann Benedict have enticed buyers and
consumers with ultra-soft and colorful basic T-shirts designed to be
layered on the body.
Stansfield and Benedict drew a wide-ranging customer base after
the apparel line was featured on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” last
year. The brand got a further boost from a national television ad
for Visa, which portrayed the designers and their growing company.
Today, C&C California ships about $2 million in orders per month
to specialty retailers including Ron Herman, Dari and Planet Blue in
the Los Angeles area and Scoop in New York.
Both designers agree the key to their success is the use of
innovative fabric–– not to mention keeping a positive attitude
and insisting on advance payment via credit card machines. They say
the line works well in a wide range of sizes, from Benedict’s
petite size small to the large size meant to fit Stansfield’s
6-foot-plus build.
Claire Stansfield, Frances Harder,
Henry Cherner and Cheyann Benedict
Henry Cherner, principal of software company
AIMS and an advisory board member of Fashion Business Inc.,
enlisted Stansfield and Benedict to share their meteoric apparel
industry rise at the trade organization’s second “Distinguished
Speakers Series” presentation, held May 17 at the fashion theater
of the California Market Center in Los Angeles. California
Apparel News Manufacturing Editor Claudia Figueroa
attended the event, moderated by FBI President and Executive
Director Frances Harder.
Harder: When you started out, was it because you wanted
to be entrepreneurs?
Stansfield: Cheyann and I were at a perfect time in our lives. We
really wanted to have our own company.… Cheyann and I don’t have
a fashion background, but we were such T-shirt junkies and coveted
certain types of T-shirts. We have a vast collection of vintage
T-shirts.
When we started out in the business, pants were getting lower, so
there was midriff. We’re getting older, and we don’t need our
thongs to be showing out the back or our bellies to be out. So we
were just coveting the chic T-shirt. So I think business-wise, we
were very sure about what we were doing, and we weren’t afraid to
go and sell it.
Harder: Did you get a loan?
Benedict: I set up a credit card machine in my house, so we knew
that the cash was in our bank account and that we could continue.
And then Claire had a little straw basket filled with T-shirts that
she would just peddle around to a lot of really great women in Los
Angeles. We just wanted to get them out to as many people as
possible. We felt that once people got them on their body that they
would really love them and want more.
Stansfield: It helped that we had a simple idea. We had six
T-shirts, one fabric, no trims, no zippers, no belts, no sequins—
it was a basic thing. We really kept our costs down; that way we
were able to make a few hundred T-shirts.
Harder: Where are you selling internationally?
Stansfield: We’re in Paris at a great shop called Colette.
It’s like a Ron Herman in that it dictates to the rest, especially
the department stores and some of the other shops. If Colette buys
you, it’s sort of like a stamp of approval. We were very lucky
because a very good family friend knows that world— she speaks two
languages, she’s an international saleswoman, and [she understood
our product]. She got us into Harvey Nichols and Selfridges
& Co. and some of the great shops in London, and then
in Paris, and then in Milan. Like in Los Angeles and in New York, we
started with the buyers from the best boutiques. We just signed a
Japanese distributor, we have a Chinese distributor, and we have a
Korean distributor.
Harder: Is everything produced domestically here in Los
Angeles?
Benedict: The fabric is knitted here, dyed and finished. Everything
is done in Los Angeles. I lived in New York for 9 1/2 years, and
there’s no way we would ever have been able to accomplish what we
accomplished here in New York–– it’s just too difficult.
Everything we need is here; manufacturing here is so accessible.
Harder: How did you get the Visa commercial?
Stansfield: Visa had already storyboarded it. So we actually got
lucky that we already fit the bill. They already decided to do a
commercial with two women with their name on a label of a fashion
company. They couldn’t find anyone. So then randomly my sister
went to college with somebody from the commercial agency, and she
said: “Visa’s frantic to find a company with two women’s names
on the label. Doesn’t your sister have a T-shirt line and a
partner?” So it really was just meant to be. They had already cast
and already storyboarded it; they just sort of inserted our company.
So it really wasn’t so much about Cheyann and I—it was about
Visa, small business and that storyline being the third partner,
only they don’t get their name on the label.
Harder: Did that commercial generate a lot of business?
Stansfield: It made us appear like we were more established than we
were at the time. We were shipping out of our garages. And then you
see this commercial, and it shows all of these people working for
the company. Meanwhile, we were in our PJs schlepping boxes
ourselves.
Article reprinted with permission
from from ApparelNews.net
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