Marc O'Polo

Founding

Founded in Stockholm in 1967 by three friends — the Swedes Rolf Lind and Göte Huss and the American Jerry O'Sheets — Marc O’Polo’s first collection piece was a patchwork shirt of Indian cotton. Countering the contemporary trend towards synthetic clothing, the company’s enduring preference for natural materials was definitively expressed in its first advertising campaign which showcased a lone, organic motif: a single strawberry.

The young label experienced significant successes in 1972 with the introduction of a logo-imprinted, cotton T-shirt and the launch of a unisex sweatshirt. Having presented full womenswear and menswear collections since 1975, by 1983 Marc O’Polo was creating two collections seasonally, eight annually. The first Marc O’Polo store opened in Dusseldorf in 1979.

Expansion

In 1997 the company’s original distribution partner for Germany, Werner Böck, expanded his shareholdings and formed Marc O’Polo International GmbH, which is today responsible for all company operations from design and production to distribution and marketing. The same year Marc O’Polo relocated its headquarters from Stockholm to Stephanskirchen in Rosenheim, south of Munich.

With its new headquarters and a centralised warehouse in southern Bavaria from which to supply its customers, Marc O’Polo began further diversifying its products, offering bags and small leather goods from 1997 and launching beachwear and children’s collections from 1998. In 2003, a flagship Marc O’Polo store with 900 square-meters of floorspace opened in Munich’s Theatinerstrasse and the company launched its online store. By 2007 Marc O’Polo was supplying more than 1,000 stores and international partner retailers. That year, on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, the company launched its ‘since 67’ collection to benefit UNICEF’s Schools for Africa program.

Since 2008, and the opening of the first Marc O’Polo store in Asia (in Singapore Changi Airport), the company has continued to invest in international expansion. The first Marc O’Polo stores in China opened in 2014. Today, the company supplies more than 2,500 stores and retail partners in more than 30 countries.

Partnerships

In 2013 Marc O’Polo introduced a new claim, ‘Follow your Nature’, and began featuring celebrities in its campaigns. The Academy Award–winning actor Jeff Bridges became the protagonist of the company’s menswear collections. At his side for 2013 and Spring 2014 was Amber Valletta, followed by Uma Thurman in Fall/Winter 2014 in campaigns photographed by Mario Sorrenti.

With Jeff Bridges, Marc O’Polo created a special T-shirt collection in 2014, a portion of the proceeds of which were donated to the Institute of Compassionate Awareness in Santa Barbara, California. Dubbed ‘chari-tee’, the collection consisted of T-shirts adorned with conceptual nouns ending phonetically in '-tee’ (e.g. ‘simplici-tee’, ‘beau-tee’, ‘liber-tee’) originally hand-painted by the actor who has been committed for many years to spreading awareness of the practice of mindfulness.

For the Fall/Winter 2013 and Spring/Summer 2014 seasons, Marc O’Polo co-created special collections with the fashion illustrator Garance Doré, and for the Fall/Winter 2014 season with the graffiti artist André Saraiva.

Since 2011, the company has sponsored the Marc O’Polo Design Award which honors innovative approaches to design among the students of Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, Sweden.

Marc O'Polo has also supported specific creative ventures by a range of international artists, such as the 2013 publication of a bilingual (German-English) edition of photographer Werner Eisele’s chronicle of auto racing in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Formula 1 Legends; floral artist Thierry Boutemy's installation ‘A Piece of Art’ exhibited in the Marc O'Polo store in Brussels during the 2014 Art Brussels contemporary art fair; the 2014 photo::vienna exhibition of contemporary Austrian photography at Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK); and artist Stefan Gbureck’s 2014 motorcycle ride from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro.

Accolades

In 2009, Marc O'Polo Accessories was awarded “Best of I.L.M.” at the I.L.M. International Leather Goods Fair in Offenbach, Germany, in recognition of innovative design superlatively presented.

Marc O’Polo was the recipient of the 2009 Forum Award, presented by the fashion trade journal TextilWirtschaft in recognition of outstanding entrepreneurship resulting in a sustained impact on the fashion industry. Accepting the award, Marc O’Polo’s chairman Werner Böck cited the "keywords" of the company’s philosophy — “Natural, Quality, Personality, Simplicity and Innovation” — as “a significant element” of its success.

In the “Working in Fashion 2014” industry survey conducted by TextilWirtschaft, Marc O’Polo received positive evaluations from graduates and young employees, scoring particularly well in categories related to “working atmosphere”, “social responsibility” and “work-life balance”. The study ranked Marc O’Polo among the top five employers in Germany’s fashion industry.