Marquee Brands to take back operations of BCBGMAXAZRIA

With this announcement Marquee Brands is further accelerating its rapidly growing digital business. "This is an important step for the Marquee-Direct platform to further compete in the digital age under one world class digital organization," the company said in a media statement.

In launching Marquee-Direct, the company made the decision to bring all e-commerce in-house and to handle all site design and development, merchandising, content creation and customer engagement. This was made possible with Marquee’s long-term relationships with best-in-class logistics partners for delivery and customer service. In this ever-changing retail environment, these capabilities will be crucial to assisting the growth of Marquee’s other operating partners as well as allowing the company to scale by adding new brands to the platform.

Adding the BCBG Group to this platform, which includes Ben Sherman, Body Glove, Dakine, Bruno Magli, Motherhood Maternity and Pea in a Pod, will allow Marquee Brands to achieve a more sustainable scale while also achieving better operating leverage, the statement said.

“Taking back the BCBG business and integrating it on to our Marquee-Direct platform with a heightened focus on product and our global partners will no doubt result in profitability that exceeds what could have been achieved through the prior license,” said Jonathan Greller, head of Strategy & Corporate Development at Marquee.

“Marquee is a brand owner that manages a portfolio of world class assets under diverse business models including a 'digital first' mindset where each of the directly managed brands is experiencing double digit year-over-year growth on e-commerce, even during this crisis,” said Diane Bekhor, SVP of Brand Management over the BCBG brands. “BCBG has a strong 30-year brand heritage and a devoted customer base and the brands will benefit significantly from this transition. We are excited to have our hands on the wheel toward this next phase of growth and will be working closely with Centric to ensure a smooth transition,” said Bekhor.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RKS)