New York - Ever since the rage for licensed team apparel has been on the wane, activewear retailers have been looking for another category to catch fire. And one item that has helped bridge the slump until a clear trend develops is verbiage, or 'attitude,' T-shirts.
These shirts started springing up on young men a few seasons ago from manufacturers like Carlsbad, Calif.-based No Fear, an unquestionable leader in the category. The T's, geared mostly to young men, sport either risque phrases or tough-talk messages. Eventually, other slogans started cropping up for either older or younger consumers, turning the grass roots business into a bona fide category.
Retailers say the shirts are helping their sales while the activewear business decides where it should go. After all, in the last few seasons, active has seen fleece sales drop and then rise; and a plethora of other categories, from surfwear to golf to branded merchandise to outdoor sportswear, have all been jockeying for position.
During this period the old reliable has been simple T-shirts whose slogans constantly change and that get great markups. Manufacturers were and still are ecstatic, saying they've seen their businesses grow by leaps and bounds - by as much as 200 percent - in the last year.
However, as hot as these T's are for both retailers and vendors, stores say the category has reached its peak and will downtrend in a year or two. Which means that despite the fact that the shirts continue to fly off shelves, merchants aren't in the market for new resources. They admit, however, that they'll keep restocking new slogans from their current crop of vendors.
According to Jeff Coate, merchandise manager for young men's sportswear at J.C. Penney, both verbiage T's and surf-related screenprinted shirts are very strong for the store. But he said he hesitates to buy a lot more in the verbiage vein, since new novelty T-shirts are coming in all the time.
Herman's Sporting Goods' Stuart Kessler, executive vice-president and chief operating officer, also believes the overall verbiage T-shirt category is post peak, but if a great saying or theme comes along, it's destined to do well.
'In the T-shirt business, there will be hot items as opposed to the entire category doing well,' Kessler said, 'although I'm looking with some interest at the whole outdoors feeling in T's. These are things that revolve around ecology and nature - they really tie sporting goods and the great outdoors together. Some have sayings, but they're more visual, with artwork [rather] than verbiage.'
City Sports Boston's Jeffrey Conor, apparel buyer, also agrees that the verbiage T's have peaked.
'But they're not on a downfall yet,' he said. 'Right now, it's not even T-shirt season - granted we've had a warm winter - but sales of the T's are still quite steady. I think the trend still has two years. With verbiage, it has to be fresh designs and sayings all the time.'
Conor said shirts by Boston-based Big Balls, which feature phrases for an older customer like 'Football is life,' are his best-selling. In fact, he said, City Sports stores never carried licensed apparel, so it looked to other categories like the T's to weather the storm.
'Now that the trend is toward branded, we're picking up in sales,' he said. 'But verbiage definitely helped in the interim. We have the technical runner and performance athlete, so the T-shirts filled the void for us, especially this last summer. Now the traditional branded apparel, from people like Nike, has really been getting a good upswing in sales. And it's great for us because we cater to that business.'
Conor said he always looks at new lines, but since Big Balls has new product, he'll stick with that. Besides, he said he thinks branded activewear will be huge next fall. 'Nike especially is the strongest its been in five years,' he said.
For the Illinois-based Glik's Stores, the verbiage T's are still very much a viable business, according to Jim Glik, vice-president, but he said it's basically a matured business at this point.
'We're not searching for new resources,' he said. 'If I go to MAGIC, I already know what I'm doing: just plugging in reorders and new releases from my top guys - No Fear, Bad Boys, which is doing well, Nike and Chump Gear - because you have to change the designs constantly.'
Glik said his activewear business is coming down to brands, statement T's and now sportswear-oriented product. T-shirts from surf companies like Yaga and Stussy are also where his business is.
Debbie Carpenter, the activewear buyer for Glik's sporting goods stores, said the branded apparel from lines like Nike or Reebok is taking a lot away from the licensed team apparel business.
'The only thing that continues to be strong in licensed are replica looks - the authentic jerseys that the players wear on the court or field,' she said.
Carpenter added that in verbiage T's, the shirts for women (which sport phrases like 'I'm Cooking. But Not Your Dinner') are very strong. Nike is one manufacturer making women's attitude T's. Carpenter said that in her men's area she also just put in reorders with Philadelphia-based And 1, a company that started with attitude T's and is now expanding its product line.
Seth Berger, president of And 1, which started shipping a year ago, he sees the company as a maker of basketball apparel.
And verbiage is part of it,' he said. 'Our business has exploded. But we introduced an activewear line that's been perceived very well by focus groups and consumers. We don't want to be just a verbiage T-shirt line.'
Berger said the primary reason And 1 expanded its line is that it wants to be a total basketball apparel brand, so it has to have more than message T-shirts. 'We have to offer different products to different kinds of players. Not everyone wants an `I'm sorry. I thought you could play' T-shirt. Also, anyone can sell a verbiage T-shirt for a season or two. The test is whether you can make verbiage T's into a brand of clothing.'
CoEd Naked is also going beyond its line of verbiage to expand into sportswear, according to Scott MacHardy, president. The company is branching into apparel under the Naked Wear label. The line is comprised of casual clothes like walk shorts, fleece, tops and bottoms. MacHardy said it's a logo-driven, line, as opposed to the T-shitrt which are art- and verbiage-driven.
'We do feel the attitude T's, or personal statement wear, is getting saturated at points,' MacHardy said.
MacHardy said his business has sustained steady, exponential growth over the last several years, and he expects that to continue in '95. In 1990, CoEd had $1 million in sales, $2.5 million the next year, $7 million in '93 and $25 million last year. And besides the sportswear line, CoEd has entered into licensing arrangements with Just Hafta, an Australian T-shirt collection, and Life Sports, a T-shirt company based in Florida.
Street Buzz, a New York-based verbiage T-shirt company, has seen its business grow 200 percent in the last year, according to Kenny Dichter, executive vice-president.
The company started shipping Street Buzz product in 1992 to specialty stores, and has expanded its distribution to department stores, Dichter said. The Street Buzz target customer is young men and men aged 12 to 30. The company also added a label called Why Work, which is geared to the 20- to 50-year-old customer.
It has added caps to its assortment, and added mugs to its Why Work line of merchandise. It also added a boys' line a year ago to expand its market further.
