Southern Tide is a way more mature brand than it was in 2016 when college student Allen Stephenson created a colorful polo shirt with a skipjack fish as its logo.
But that polo with its distinctive logo quickly found fans and Stephenson was able to branch out into a wider Southern-skewed sportswear collection that eventually caught the eye of Oxford Industries, which purchased the company for $85 million in 2016.
Southern Tide is part of Oxford’s portfolio of “happy, upbeat lifestyle brands,” that includes Tommy Bahama and Lilly Pulitzer, and is housed in its burgeoning “emerging brands” division, which encompasses the Beauford Bonnet Co. and Duckhead, among others.
Over the past four years, Southern Tide has been on a growth spurt under the direction of chief executive officer Carey Ann Campbell. She joined the company in 2020 as vice president of direct-to-consumer and was elevated to the top post a year later.
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“At that point, we were 80 percent wholesale — we had one store. So it really was about coming in and building that direct store channel,” she said.
So far, so good. Southern Tide operates 33 stores across the country and from 2022 to 2023 alone, expanded its retail footprint by 250 percent. Twelve stores opened in 2024 and the plan going forward is to continue to add to the fleet, with eight to 10 units a year expected in 2025 and beyond, Campbell said.
“We’ve had a pretty thoughtful approach with stores and store growth, using a lot of data on who our customer is, and then finding places where they are,” she explained. “But the magic that happens with our stores is about finding that customer in their happy place and connecting them with our brand so it creates this emotional connection to our product and our brand.”
Although Southern Tide is ostensively a Southern brand centered around a coastal lifestyle, Campbell said it has become more than that over the past 18 years.
“We have a really strong presence in the Northeast,” she said. “We are in Nantucket, Chatham, Mashpee, [Mass.]. We opened Sag Harbor, [N.Y.], recently. There’s something really simplistic about that sense of coastal ease and we’ve found that it’s just about that way of life.”
But the stores don’t have to be near the water to succeed, she stressed. A boutique inland in Cary, N.C., is performing well and there are plans to open a unit next year in Scottsdale — which is nowhere near the coast. “It’s about wherever somebody is relaxed,” she said.
Direct-to-consumer now accounts for just over 50 percent of the company’s overall sales and volume in this channel has more than tripled since fiscal 2022. But that doesn’t mean Southern Tide is turning its back on wholesale.
“We have incredible wholesale partners like Dillard’s and Von Maur and, I will say this, Dillard’s gets really excited when we open a store because it lifts their business,” she said. “Wholesale remains a critical component of our business and it allows us to reach customers we’d never have the ability to reach because they aren’t walking into our stores. So we will continue to foster those relationships and grow there as appropriate. We’re trying to be great at both. And I do think as we become better retailers, we become better wholesalers.”
Within its own stores, Southern Tide has been able to create an environment that truly expresses the brand ethos. And beginning in 2025, the company will work with Kramer Design Group, known for its design work for Alexander Wang and Kate Spade among others, to create a template for future stores intended to emphasize the soul of the brand and its coastal aesthetic.
While the company’s physical reach has expanded over the past few years as it aggressively adds stores, Campbell said the design direction of its collection has remained intact. “I wouldn’t say that we’ve changed our aesthetic, but we have to think about it differently,” she said. “We’ve become better wholesalers and have really tightened the product to offer what the customer is responding to and what fits in our stores. So there’s certainly been an evolution of the product in that aspect, but not necessarily the aesthetic.”
While Southern Tide started as a men’s-only brand, women’s now accounts for 25 percent of sales and is viewed as an opportunity. “We have some work to do to continue to grow that category of the business,” she said, “but we’re pleased with the results so far.”
In men’s, the Skipjack Polo remains the hero product along with the popular Intercoastal pant and Brrr-die short. In women’s, the Leah and Caroline shorts are popular and the brand’s performance dresses are also strong, Campbell said.
Looking ahead, she said there are “definitely opportunities for us to grow and expand in other areas and I think you’ll see a little bit of that coming in the future.”
In addition, the company is looking into adding more third-party brands to its stores. It currently has some licensees in products such as home, and Campbell said there’s “no need to reinvent the wheel” on other categories where there are already “great brands doing great things” that could eventually be offered in the stores.
And while the lens may be focused on physical retail, the online business also remains a priority, Campbell said. “We view our e-commerce site as our flagship store — it’s our largest store — so we have to invest there as well. So we’re simultaneously working with web development to make that experience just as seamless from a brand experience.”
