Canada’s Joseph Ribkoff is one of North America’s oldest brands — and also among the least known of those that have endured.
But now the 69-year-old brand has a new chief executive officer on board, and a new business plan calling for the launch of e-commerce, a revamp of the collection, an increase in marketing to about 5 percent of sales from practically nil and a new, active social media engagement plan.
The company is also opening its first brick-and-mortar store, which will be in the Auckland Airport in New Zealand, and its first outlet, which will be in Wrentham, Mass. Both are opening later this spring.
In addition, the brand has been aggressively growing its travel business on cruise ships and there are plans to bolster the brand’s relatively underdeveloped accessories and cashmere businesses, while dresses, knitwear and denim continue to be important.
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“We are late to the game, but we expect to launch e-commerce by the middle of the summer,” said Stephen Belfer, the CEO of Joseph Ribkoff. “The whole collection will be available. The collection is quite big actually. We do four seasons. The bigger collections — fall and spring — represent about 350 styles each. Winter and summer represent about 150 to 200 styles.” The collections include jeans, leisure wear, dresses and eveningwear.
“There is an opening that I see in the market for a brand like this to really explode, because nobody knows it.”
Belfer joined the Montreal-based company as vice president of global sales and business development last fall. Just two months later, he became CEO when the owners wanted a change in command, and wanted to wake up the brand. Prior to joining Joseph Ribkoff, Belfer spent 11 years as CEO of the North American unit of Marc Cain, a German premium women’s fashion brand. He’s credited with establishing Marc Cain’s retail footprint in the U.S. and Canada with 14 stores and three showrooms, launching e-commerce operations in Canada and the U.S. and driving sustained revenue growth.
Joseph Ribkoff founded the namesake fashion brand in 1955, and sold the company to private equity firms Novacap, Fonds de solidarité and DNA Partners in 2017. Ribkoff stayed on the board until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The brand managed to survive through the pandemic even without e-commerce.
“We intend to elevate the brand. We intend to to bring it to a different level worldwide, with different silhouettes, different types of fashion,” Belfer said. “We need to modernize the brand and that’s what we’re doing. Now that we are launching e-commerce, we’re ramping up social media” including with Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
“We can actually now start to tell our own story, instead of relying on the 3,500 stores worldwide that sell Joseph Ribkoff,” he said. “We were a very quiet brand, but now it’s time to really take it to the next level and let the world know about us. It’s about updating the brand while keeping its core DNA.”
Without the benefit of e-commerce or operating stores, the brand has managed to stay profitable off approximately $200 million in annual volume, according to Belfer. The business has relied on wholesaling to department and specialty stores, and providing fits and fabrics that move with and flatter the body, as well as bold colors and prints, he said. It’s also an inclusive brand, offering sizes from 2 to 22. All items in the collection are sold under the Joseph Ribkoff label.
The core customer has been a woman 60 and older, Belfer said. However, with changes in the works, the brand seeks to appeal to those around 45 and older. “We don’t want to lose the core customer, but it’s also about adapting, in a modern way, what we do well to a different customer,” Belfer said. “Once we have a digital platform, we can chase that woman. We’re very much about colors and prints. That’s core to Joseph Ribkoff. We’ll continue to do that with new designs.…Our core customers are women who are constantly on the move and traveling. Many are executives running through airports. They want the fit, the craft, the performance — clothes that make it easy to get dressed and clothes that you don’t have to steam or iron when unpacking.”
Asked why the brand is so late launching e-commerce, Belfer said, “I don’t know if this is really true, but it seemed older people were not as digitally oriented as younger people. Maybe that’s not so true anymore.
“The main thing is really to invest in the brand itself, to tell its story to the world, to get the PR out there because I can tell you that for the last 69 years, around the industry, in different countries, nobody knows us,” he said. “We’ve got to create brand awareness. And the way you do that is through social media, e-commerce, press days in London, Paris [and] New York. But more than anything, the investment in the product has to increase, to evolve and compete in today’s modern retail landscape.”
Joseph Ribkoff sells at about 3,500 different retailers in 62 countries, including Breuninger in Germany, Arnotts in Ireland, Fenwick in the U.K., Von Maur in the U.S., the Nordstrom website and the Julian Gold, Maison Weiss and Ballin’s specialty stores. The business is split evenly between Europe and North America.
Among the recent bestsellers are: a cotton stripe and flare shirtdress, priced $285; a cotton twill short trench with belt and rhinestone detail, $285, and a bouclé sleeveless vest, $195, paired with pencil skirt with gold buttons, $255.
In September, Joseph Ribkoff will launch a capsule collection for a contemporary, fashion-forward customer with modern sportswear, sharp tailoring, architectural silhouettes, luxe faux furs, new knitwear, dark, blurred florals and fine lingerie-inspired details, including lace-trimmed camisoles and blouses that add “a refined sensuality.”
“We’re positioning the company to be a true global brand, a brand that is known worldwide,” Belfer said. “We’ll be approaching a lot of the major retailers, but we’re very strategic in how we approach things, and that’s what made Joseph Ribkoff successful for so many years.”
