| Fortune Fashions: The Next Size Up |
| Corporate Spotlight | |
| Written by Liz Jones | |
| Sunday, 30 September 2007 | |
 Lee Rosenblatt describes how this company is taking the retail environment by storm with creative designs and competitive pricing. Fortune Fashions evolved out of Harry Rosenblatt & Sons, an apparel company founded in 1915 by Rosenblatt’s grandfather. By the early 1990s, the business wasn’t growing as aggressively as it once did, and Rosenblatt decided to take it in another direction. Entrepreneur Fred Kayne purchased the company in 1991 and made Rosenblatt and colleague Johnathan Hirsh partners. The trio renamed the company Fortune Fashions, which embroiders and screen prints t-shirts, sweat shirts, and other apparel for the retail and tourist industries.  Lee Rosenblatt, COO And the strategy worked quite well. From $14 million in sales in 1991 to $180 million in 2007, Fortune Fashions continues to grow. Given the company’s recent move into the retail industry, that growth won’t be slowing any time soon. Taking the leap About four years ago, Fortune Fashions decided to expand beyond the entertainment and tourist industries to capture profitable opportunities in the retail sector. “After 9/11, we realized that the tourist industry wasn’t as recession-proof as we had once thought. We were all of a sudden vulnerable,” said Rosenblatt. “We also had a mature tourist business; we were doing business with just about every major player in the industry, and we didn’t see much room to grow.” A large number of the buyers Fortune Fashions had worked with in the tourist and entertainment industries over the years moved to the retail industry and began clamoring for the quick turnaround times and superior creative abilities Fortune Fashions offered. In 2003, the company began selling to J.C. Penney, later creating relationships with major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears, Target, and Kohl’s. “Retail has become our primary growth emphasis,” Rosenblatt said. “We now sell to most of the large and mid-tier mass retailers in the US.” Since then, Fortune Fashions has been hiring aggressively and doubled the size of the print shop in its 500,000-square-foot building, making it the largest screen printing facility in the US with the capacity to print up to 250,000 t-shirts per day. A 100,000-square-foot warehouse stores mountains of blank inventory sourced from around the world. “Clearly, we are far from the garage-based business many t-shirt printers are assumed to be,” Rosenblatt said. Key advantages Because it is the largest screen printer in the US, Rosenblatt explained that many ink manufacturers and apparel innovators call on Fortune Fashions to serve as a beta test center. “That gives us access to the very latest trends and techniques,” he said. In addition, Fortune Fashion’s R&D team continuously develops new inks and screen-printing treatments. Rosenblatt added that Fortune Fashions is able to turn around product much faster than the competition, mainly because the majority of functions are done inhouse and under one roof. “We do a tremendous amount of replenishment business,” said Rosenblatt. “Our analysts work with retailers on a weekly basis to make purchasing recommendations, and within 10 days, we can ship it. That means our retailers always have access to the latest merchandise.” Much of the competition, however, tends to outsource a variety of functions, including sales, creative, screen printing, and fulfillment. “They just don’t have the amount of control over the process that we do.” And because Fortune Fashions stores blank inventory in its warehouse, it never has to wait months for merchandise to arrive from overseas. Being a privately held company with a small group of decisionmakers who don’t need to weed through layers of bureaucracy doesn’t hurt reaction times, either. Operating in one facility does more for the company than increase turnaround time. Rosenblatt said it is an interesting and vibrant atmosphere to work. “Our 1,600 employees represent the dichotomy of the world,” he chuckled. In addition, artists, sales people, and technicians have the opportunity to work together on projects. Artists see their work come to fruition, and if any questions arise, an answer is only a few steps away. “All of the departments work together on a daily basis. What we do here is very complex, and so many people are involved in each process that having strong communication from start to finish is key.” Another key to Fortune Fashions’ growth is its selectivity. When entering into a client relationship, the company is sure the client’s objectives complement its own. That means the client must be interested in quality merchandise—that may or may not mean the lowest price available—and artistic, creative designs. “We are price competitive, of course, but we want to offer a quality product.” Fortune Fashions also requires clients to purchase merchandise in large volumes. “We are studious about which customers we take on so we can service them properly,” said Rosenblatt. If there is one lesson Harry Rosenblatt passed down to his grandson, it is that a company never makes a sale—it forms a relationship with each customer. That philosophy continues to resonate throughout Fortune Fashions today, whether it is by investing all profits back into the facility or advising customers to cut their orders in half to improve sell-through. “If our customers aren’t successful, we won’t be successful, so we treat them as partners. We wouldn’t be in business if we didn’t have strong client relationships,” Rosenblatt concluded. |
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American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
