Ten years and 10 million pairs sold.
That’s what the Transcend fabric has meant to the men’s business at Paige. And Jon Geller, men’s president of the Los Angeles-based brand, thinks it’s high time to celebrate that victory.
Paige was founded 21 years ago by Jon Geller’s father Michael, his longtime business partner Michael Henschel, and his stepmother, Paige Adams-Geller, a onetime fit model.
Jon Geller was a freshman in college when Paige was launched and had no intention of joining the family business. But fashion runs in the Geller blood: in addition to his father, both his grandfather and great-grandfather were tailors in Poland before immigrating to the U.S. during World War II.
Jon Geller thought his path would be sports management, but once he started down that road, he realized it wasn’t what he had dreamed about. So he pivoted.
You May Also Like
“I grew up around the industry, but I never really saw myself in it,” he said. But the company was planning to launch men’s and turned to him to get the ball rolling.
The first four or five years were “pretty tough,” he recalled, and Paige was having a hard time finding a niche. “Men are very, very brand loyal, and a lot of times, quite honestly, it’s out of almost ignorance to other options,” he said. “So it can be a very difficult space to break into, and I was pretty frustrated.”
But at his father’s urging, he got involved on the design side of the men’s business. He quickly noticed that this proprietary denim fabric called Transcend “had really broken out on the women’s side but had been kept out of the men’s space. In my opinion, it wasn’t because [male] consumers had ever rejected it. It’s because designers and buyers never thought guys would wear it.”
The claim to fame of this cotton, rayon, polyester and spandex blend was its ability to stretch and recover while also offering comfort and a soft hand — attributes that were novel at the time. So Geller asked the design team to create a pair of men’s jeans from the fabric and when he tried them on, he knew he had a winner.
“I looked at everyone and said, ‘This is it. We have our reason to be. We have our lane. We have our flagpole moment.’”
Transcend men’s jeans hit the market a few weeks later, and it did indeed turn into a gamechanger.
“At the time, we had a massive women’s business with Nordstrom and I had been going up to Seattle and showing them our old men’s product for years, and they just weren’t interested,” he said. “And they were correct. We did not have a point of view. We were sort of chasing trends on the men’s side.”
But when he showed them Transcend, he recalled: “They said, ‘This is exactly what you need to be doing.’” It started with a 10-door test, expanded to 50 stores within three months and by the next year, rolled out to the entire chain.
“And it just kind of spread from there,” he said.
The fabric also takes color very well, so Paige began offering men an array of options. “Most brands run their color program in a twill or a brush sateen or some other fabrication,” Geller said. “For us, our primary color program is Transcend. So for our guy who fell in love with our indigo washes, he can buy every color in the rainbow, and it’s the same exact fabric and fits. That’s really unique in the space, and I think that’s helped cultivate brand loyalty.”
Today, about 65 percent of the total men’s business comes from Transcend. In addition, Paige offers Transcend Vintage, a heavier-weight alternative, that it also uses in jackets and other categories. “But at the end of the day, comfort denim and comfort fashion is definitely who we are as a brand,” Geller said.
Thanks to Transcend, men’s now accounts for around 30 percent of Paige’s total business. In addition to bottoms, which retail for $199 to $219, the company also offers everything from basic T-shirts, overshirts, hoodies and jackets to shoes and accessories. “We run the gamut now on the men’s side,” he said. “Lifestyle ready-to-wear is our quickest growing category.”
Men’s denim and lifestyle product is carried today at a range of retailers including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, Harrods and Selfridges. And in Paige’s own 25 stores, men’s actually accounts for around 50 percent of sales.
As a tribute to Transcend’s 10-year anniversary, Paige unveiled the campaign dedicated to the fabric, a short film series from Russell Tandy that provides an inside look at the engineering and detail that goes into the creation of every product. The video series launched on Paige’s digital channels in July. The company also held a dinner in L.A. cohosted by Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts.
Geller said even though Transcend “took off like an absolute rocket ship” when it launched in 2015, in the years since, “I think we took it for granted.” That’s the reason for the shout-out now. “We want to remind the market that we did it first, and we still do it best,” he said.
Since the campaign broke, Geller said sales of Transcend have jumped not only on the Paige website, but also through its wholesale customers.
So what’s next for Transcend and the Paige men’s business? “Our guy is somebody who wants to be comfortable when he walks out in the world and I don’t really see that changing,” Geller said.
As a result, expect Paige to continue to “push the boundaries of what Transcend can do,” while expanding other categories, too. “We’ll continue to push the lifestyle and ready-to-wear. The product marries well with our denim and bottoms. It’s a super cohesive offering and story. We’re still just scratching the surface here on the men’s side,” he said.
