Industry Fashion Founder Sidney Kimmel Number of employees 6,000 | Owner Sycamore Partners Founded 1970 Type of business Private | |
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Headquarters New York City, New York, United States CEO Wesley R Card (12 Jul 2007–) Subsidiaries Nine West, Jones New York, Easy Spirit, Anne Klein | ||
Nine West Holdings (formerly The Jones Group and Jones Apparel Group), a company with over 6,000 employees, is an American designer, marketer and wholesaler of branded clothing, shoes and accessories.
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Operations
Nine West Holding headquarters are in New York City. The company also markets directly to consumers through their chain of specialty retail and value-based stores. In addition, it markets costume jewelry under the Givenchy brand licensed from Givenchy Corporation and footwear under the Dockers Women brand licensed from Levi Strauss & Co.
History
In 1970, Sidney Kimmel founded and became President of the Jones Apparel Division of W.R. Grace & Co. Together with Grace accountant Gerard Rubin, Kimmel bought Grace's fashion division in 1975, incorporating it as Jones Apparel Group. Jones expanded quickly by bringing out new labels and licensing others, such as Christian Dior.
In the early 1980s, Jones Apparel offered the sweatsuit fashions of Norma Kamali, and in 1984 they acquired the license for the Gloria Vanderbilt line from Murjani.
In the early 1990s, the company expanded with new lines Rena Rowan and Jones & Co.
In 2004, the company purchased luxury department store chain Barneys New York for $400 million, and sold it, in September 2007, to Dubai-based investment firm Istithmar for $942.3 million.
In December 2013, Sycamore Partners, which is managed by Stefan L. Kaluzny, purchased the Jones Group for about USD $2.2 billion. Wesley Card is the CEO of The Jones Group. In 2014, Sycamore split Jones into six different companies: Nine West Group, One Jeanswear Group, Jones New York, the Kasper Group, Stuart Weitzman and Kurt Geiger. The Jones Group was renamed Nine West Holdings and became parent to Nine West Group and One Jeanswear Group. Later in 2014, Anne Klein, Easy Spirit and NW Jewelry Group were split into separate operating companies of Nine West.
In 2014, Brian Atwood was sold to Steve Madden. In 2015, Stuart Weitzman was sold to Coach and Jones New York was sold to Authentic Brands Group.
In December 2016, Easy Spirit was sold to Marc Fisher Footwear. The Kasper Group was then purchased and incorporated under the parent company Nine West Holdings in January 2017.
Brands
Nine West Holdings' brands include: