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Williamsburg Garment Co.

If Maurice Malone’s new brand, Williamsburg Garment Co., doesn’t make it, he’ll have no one to blame but himself. Or at least that’s how the new jeans business has been set up.

Malone, whose childhood aspirations to become a special effects animator were abandoned in time for him to land at the vortex of the burgeoning hip-hop scene in New York and his native Detroit, has no backers. At the moment, he has no plans to solicit any or, for that matter, to attend trade shows or supplement his current staff of one — himself.

Working from home in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Malone is looking to avoid the pitfalls of the past — which have included backers and licensees and initially successful forays into women’s contemporary sportswear and a men’s collection — and put together a line of jeans for a limited number of stores that generally sell their denim for $150 and up. But, working with extremely limited overhead, he’s selling retailers jeans with an abundance of detail at $31 for them to sell at about $90, and he’s looking to relegate his distribution to one retailer per market, starting with stores including Brooklyn Denim Co., not far from his Williamsburg apartment; Opening Ceremony in Manhattan and Los Angeles, and Sugarcube in Philadelphia. Subsequent accounts might include better stores with a presence in multiple cities, both in the U.S. and abroad.

“I don’t need 2,000 accounts and I can’t even do 2,000 accounts,” he says. “Until the demand is solid, one account per city is about right. I want every retailer I work with to understand the concept behind the product. Everything gets lost if I’m selling to a big store. The product is inexpensive, but nothing about it says ‘cheap.’”

So great is his commitment to avoiding high volume and the risks that invariably come with it that he’s written the words “We are a one-man operation doing small-time business” directly into the product, but he’s put it on the inside of the jeans, printed onto one of the pockets. “Small time operation” also appears on the products’ hangtags.

“I make that statement because, first, it’s the truth, and second, so I can prove and inspire people — especially talented designers who may have had bad breaks or think it can be done without backers — that they can achieve success in this business by, as Steve Jobs said, ‘thinking different’ and going for it,” he said. -WWD

(Source: wwd.com)