How Edwards Garment Found Success In a ‘Normal Year’
As a part of Print & Promo Advertising and marketing’s 2023 High Suppliers record, we requested a number of the top-ranked suppliers about how they managed to proceed their progress all through the uncertainty that has nonetheless loomed over 2021 and 2022.
Learn on for our dialog with Bryan Kiel, director of selling for Edwards Garment, the No. 2 provider on our record. Or, obtain the total High Suppliers useful resource for the entire interviews, detailed stats and evaluation for the High Suppliers record, and outcomes of our 2023 Provider Excellence Awards
Edwards Garment – No. 10
2022 gross sales: $99,600,000
Kalamazoo, Michigan 1
80 staff, two places
Established in 1867
Bryan Kiel
Bryan Kiel, director of selling for Edwards Garment, says 2022 was the most effective yr ever for the corporate. By means of a mix of things, the corporate noticed 41% progress year-over-year. However maybe what made the largest distinction was that it was what Kiel calls the primary “regular yr,” because the mud lastly settled after the institution of the EdwardsX model, previously Bishop Customized Clothes, which Edwards acquired in November 2019.
That funding, in Kiel’s phrases, helped the corporate show to its distributor clients in addition to end-buyers the corporate’s deep stock and customized design capabilities. Stock, in 2022, was a sizzling challenge, as pandemic results have been nonetheless felt all through the trade, and provide chain points and manufacturing issues continued deep into the yr.
“Our stock place was among the finest within the attire trade, and when distributors have been searching for stock, we had it,” Kiel says. “Our management and planning groups had the foresight to spend money on stock in addition to supply in a number of areas, and this helped us reap the advantages in 2022 whereas many others suffered provide chain points.”
What They’re Targeted On: “We’re centered on a number of issues to finish 2023 off robust and proceed our momentum into 2024,” Kiel says. “Our 2024 catalog simply dropped on Sept. 1, and this catalog options some nice new types, together with rising the vary of our attire choices for women. Most of our males’s types have already got a women’ companion, and we launched some new types, together with women’ tender blouses, a retail-inspired herringbone jacket, and a light-weight tender shell jacket, amongst others.”
Edwards can also be rising consciousness for its Level Gray model, which it launched in March 2022, and is made up of sustainable, ergonomic types that “converse to the uniform wearer of at this time,” and replicate the fashionable appears to be like utilized by companies within the fashionable age.
What Distributors Can Look Ahead To: “We’ll proceed to deliver extra retail-inspired types to market in 2024,” Kiel says. “And on the subject of our customized group at EdwardsX, should you can dream it, they will make it.”