Shirt retailers: Spot the difference

T ake a walk down Jermyn Street and what’s likely to strike you is that, as well as the traditional bespoke shirt-makers, there are four names that appear to stem from the high street: TM Lewin, Thomas Pink, Charles Tyrwhitt and Hawes & Curtis. In fact all of them, can trace their roots at different times back to this thoroughfare. It’s just that, under their respective ownerships, they have broken into the mass market, while others have remained Jermyn Street shirt-makers.

As such, they come from a distinctly conservative lineage and a part of the fashion world where things are done in a particular manner. Wander into any of the quartet’s Jermyn Street flagships and the similarities are, to the uninformed eye, rather greater than the differences. They all have shirt-wall displays, a range of different styles and are usually merchandised by collar size and, in some cases, by body fit.

Now leave Jermyn Street and head off to the centre of a large city or town, say Bristol or maybe Cambridge. The chances are good that you’ll come across at least three out of four of these names wherever you happen to be, with TM Lewin almost certain to have a presence.

Price differentials

All of which might leave shoppers wondering why they should choose one over another. One reason might be price and here, within limits, there are differences. At the top of the tree sits Thomas Pink, where an entry price for men is provided by shirts at just below the £49 mark and from there prices head up to £125, which will secure you a ‘Red and White 170s Imperial Epping Stripe’, among others.

At the other end of the spectrum, multi-buys are ubiquitous. The ploy eschewed by Thomas Pink, where four shirts are offered for £100 in TM Lewin, Charles Tyrwhitt and Hawes & Curtis. Again, with the exception of Thomas Pink, three out of the four have remarkably similar positioning.

How then to differentiate? Touker Souleyman, the owner of Hawes & Curtis, says: “When you get into a difficult period, you have to give people an excuse to buy. How many business shirts do you actually need in your wardrobe?”

To an extent, Hawes & Curtis is the new kid on the block. The name may have been around for years, but it is only under Suleyman’s patronage - he bought the company five years ago - that the retailer has spread its wings.

There are now 26 standalone units, 19 of them in central London, and in most the shirts are arranged around the perimeter by collar size and body fit and housed within dark wood pigeonholes. Variation is provided by the fact that Suleyman has used his Turkish production facility to provide rapid-response fashion stylings with prints, particularly paisleys, giving the range a point of difference. Suleyman says that he hasn’t “marketed” the offer and that much of its success is based on word-of-mouth. “We’ll sell close to a million shirts this year,” he says. He also makes the point that “our strategy is to focus on selling shirts, rather than trying to be a menswear seller that offers shirts”.

Simple, then. Although a visit to the Jermyn Street flagship reveals a substantial number of suits, Hawes & Curtis’s overriding raison d’être is the sale of fashion and business shirts.

True collars

Now contrast this with TM Lewin. Chief executive Geoff Quinn says there will be 100 standalone stores by the end of this year and three weeks ago the retailer opened two more stores, a relocated store on New Bond Street and another in the City.

There are in fact 40 TM Lewin stores in London and, although they might appear similar, there are five different formats in use: “There’s Lewin Express. It’s mainly in stations and is a grab-and-go. There’s Lewin Express Plus, an extended version of this. There are shops that are for men only, where we offer suits and shirts. There’s a standalone suit shop that will open soon in Broad Street and then there are flagships like this one,” says Quinn, as he stands in the middle of the New Bond Street store. The brand is set to expand further in 2011, with a women-only format that will be trialled in the City.

The New Bond Street store is actually one of eight stores that boasts a new shopfit. Quinn points at the unvarnished light wood shirt-wall that forms the bulk of the store and the transition, via an arch, to the very formal dark wood, used in the suit area at the back of the shop. The emphasis is on tradition and the British nature of the product that is on offer, right down to the Union Jack cushions on the club-style vintage leather armchairs in the suit department. There are also graphics that draw on the brand’s tailoring heritage with images of collar construction and suchlike.

Multi-buy offer

It is the absence of in-store promotional material that really hits you between the eyes, however. Quinn admits that a few years ago TM Lewin could look “red and white” and it’s true that this used to be a retailer that seemed to have a never-ending sale. “It was awful,” he says. Today, in common with its rivals, there is the promotional multi-buy offer, but this is hardly the major selling proposition as perceived by the shopper walking through the door.

TM Lewin probably remains the most price-led of the high street offers, but it is nonetheless a considerable upgrade on the fit-out it had in the early years of the last decade. And, curiously, like almost all the other operators in the sector, it is doing well. Quinn says that the 2 million shirt sales barrier will be breached this year and that 2009 saw sales grow 22%.

Charles Tyrwhitt has also moved with the times, albeit in a traditional manner. The latest variation on the Charles Tyrwhitt manner of shifting shirts can be seen in the Regent Street store, which has been open for a little over a month. Founder Nick Wheeler says: “If you’re in the work shirt market, it’s difficult to get away with £60. Lewins and Hawes & Curtis have a very strong shirt offer and I don’t want people to go there because they’re cheaper.” He continues: “The Regent Street store is much brighter than the dark wood we’ve used previously.” He cautions, however: “It would be a mistake to create a Jermyn Street brand that was completely modern. It’s all about being traditional with a twist.”

That “twist” is embodied in Regent Street by the mannequins with checked faces and the men’s club atmosphere of the basement. There are just 14 Charles Tyrwhitt stores, but Wheeler says that 50 would be a reasonable store count five years hence.

And offering a modern take on tradition is something that Thomas Pink excels at. Like his rivals, chief executive Jonathan Heilbron has presided over a period of considerable change during his 13-year stint at the company. Store numbers have grown from 12 to 85 and international expansion has been a feature. Recently, Heilbron has also overseen the roll-out of a new-look store design, created by design consultancy Four IV, that was first unveiled at Heathrow’s T5 in 2008. Walk around a Thomas Pink store today and you’ll encounter a ‘white shirt bar’ a design response similar to that faced by BMW, where products that look ostensibly the same have widely differing price points. There is, of course, the shirt wall, although it is fair to say that some of the fixtures and fittings are marginally more upscale than the opposition.

Is there, however, more than a cigarette paper in terms of difference between the four major players in the market? The answer is almost certainly ‘yes’, but product, product mix and store design all have to be closely examined if this is to be discerned.

Jermyn Street in the provinces is what the shirt selling revolution has been about, but it is the shirt-maker’s art given a shake and made responsive to the mass market. There seems little reason to suppose that there isn’t room in the market for all four of these players, but you still have to look quite hard to see the difference, unless you’re a very regular customer.