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- Dôen Expands into Men’s and Baby with Gap Collaboration: The Los Angeles-based sustainable brand will launch a 38-piece collection with Gap, marking its entry into menswear.
- Strategic Growth Through High-Profile Partnerships: Following the sell-out success of their first collaboration, Dôen and Gap are working together again for a collection with accessible pricing.
- From Boutique Brand to $100M Business: Founded by sisters Margaret and Katherine Kleveland with a collective of women, Dôen’s thoughtful growth strategy, celebrity endorsements and brick-and-mortar expansion could signal a potential leap into major investment and global recognition.
Los Angeles sustainable brand Dôen has been what some might describe as thoughtful toward growth.
A second collaboration with Gap, set to launch on Friday, is accelerating that path as the deal pushes Dôen into men’s for the first time. The collection will also include baby. Those are some big steps for a business that was built on thoughtful approaches to sourcing and production when it was launched by sisters Margaret and Katherine Kleveland in 2016.
The 38-piece collection comes about a year after Dôen first worked with Gap, selling out on its offering of timeless, vintage looks at lower price points – $34 to $158 – than what can typically be found through its company-owned stores.
Gap provides a big stage for the Dôen name, while the latter adds more fuel to the San Francisco denim firm’s turnaround.
Gap President and CEO Mark Breitbard said the company’s first time working with Dôen “set a new bar for how a collaboration” can breathe new life into its own business. This second deal aims to continue that momentum, Breitbard said.
“We were overwhelmed by the excitement and success of our first collection with Gap,” Margaret, who serves as the company’s CEO, said in a statement.
Measured Approach
The Klevelands started Dôen with what the two have called a “collective” of five like-minded women, who also have equity stakes in the business.
Those initial partners included Allie Furlotti, Katharine Hall, Hilary Tisch, Hilary Walsh and Phoebe Dean, with each overseeing a certain function of the work it took to get the business off the ground.
In 2020, another equity partner was added, which the company described as one of its “most forward-thinking, progressive factories.” The move was done in a bid, the company said, to show how integral supply chain partners – often overlooked in fashion – are to the industry.
Ten years in and the business is set to reach $100 million in revenue, according to a March report from Puck News. That same report also floated the idea of the company tapping a private investor that could include the Wertheimer family, co-founders of Chanel.
Outside capital could help take the business to the next level. It’s already gotten far a decade into its journey.
The label has been seen on Taylor Swift and Meghan Markle, just to name a few high-profile fans.
While Dôen started as a direct-to-consumer company, it has since expanded into brick-and-mortar. Its stores are located at the Brentwood Country Mart in Santa Monica, Montecito Country Mart in Montecito, Bleecker Street in the West Village, Lido Marina Village in Newport Beach, Madison Street in Sag Harbor, Marin Country Mart in Larkspur and Main Street in Nantucket.
Now, partnerships, such as the one with Gap, offer a chance to expose the brand to new consumers across broader distribution. Time will tell how the Klevelands will leverage that for Dôen’s next decade.
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