PVH (company)

Organization

PVH Corp has its main headquarters in Manhattan, with administrative offices in Bridgewater, New Jersey; Las Vegas, Nevada and Los Angeles, California. Additional distribution facilities in the United States are located in Brinkley, Arkansas; McDonough, Georgia; Jonesville, North Carolina; Reading, Pennsylvania; and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

PVH has several sourcing facilities worldwide, located in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. The corporation employs over 12,000 people worldwide.

History

The history of Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH) goes back in part to Dramin Jones, a Prussian immigrant who founded D. Jones & Sons, which had become the largest shirt-maker in the United States by the 1880s. Separately, in 1881, Moses Phillips and his wife Endel began sewing shirts by hand and selling them from pushcarts to local anthracite coal-miners in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. This grew into a shirt business in New York City that placed one of the first ever shirt advertisements in the Saturday Evening Post. D. Jones & Sons merged with Phillips after Dramin Jones's death in 1903. Later Isaac Phillips met John Van Heusen, resulting both in their most popular line of shirts (Van Heusen) and in the subsequent renaming of the corporation to Phillips-Van Heusen in the 1950s.

The Phillips-Jones Corporation received a patent for a self-folding collar in 1919; the corporation released the product to the public in 1921 and it became successful. The first collar-attached shirt was introduced in 1929. The Bass Weejun was introduced in 1936. Geoffrey Beene shirts were launched in 1982. In 1987, Phillips-Van Heusen acquired G.H. Bass. In 1995, the corporation acquired the Izod brand, followed by the Arrow brand in 2000, and the Calvin Klein company in 2002.

After acquiring Superba, Inc., in January 2007, PVH now owns necktie licenses for brands such as Arrow, DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica, Perry Ellis, Ted Baker, Michael Kors, JOE Joseph Abboud, Original Penguin and Jones New York. The corporation began making men's clothing under the Timberland name in 2008, with women's clothing following in 2009, under a licensing agreement.

On March 15, 2010, Phillips-Van Heusen acquired Tommy Hilfiger for $3 billion.

In the third quarter of 2010 losses made on the "Van Heusen" brand led to the decision to pull it out of all European trading markets. As of March 2011 the company sells no products under that name in Europe. All European staff became redundant as a result.

In February 2013, PVH acquired Warnaco Group, which manufactured the Calvin Klein underwear, jeans and sportswear lines under license, thus consolidating control of the Calvin Klein brand. The Warnaco acquisition also added the Warner's and Olga intimate apparel brands, as well the Speedo swimwear brand (the latter in North America only).

In November 2013 PVH sold the G.H. Bass brand and all of its assets, images and licenses to G-III Apparel Group.

Distribution

PVH provides products to many popular department stores, such as Sears, JC Penney, Macy's, MYER, David Jones, Kohl's, and Dillard's, both through its own labels and private label agreements. PVH also sells its products directly to customers through about 700 outlet stores under the brand names Van Heusen, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein.

The Calvin Klein stores sell the full range of products at full price, differing from existing outlet stores. The stores are be about 10,000 square feet (930 m²). Phillips-Van Heusen closed its Geoffrey Beene outlet retail division in 2008. Approximately 25 percent of the Geoffrey Beene outlet stores became Calvin Klein stores, while the remaining 75 percent of stores closed entirely. The company will continue to license the Geoffrey Beene brand name for Geoffrey Beene brand dress shirts and men's sportswear until at least 2013. In 2015, PVH closed its Izod retail division due to an increasing competitive environment driven by more premium brands in the outlet retail channel; this did not affect Izod's wholesale business to department stores and online retailers. The Izod Golf line is now available at select Van Heusen stores.

Marketing

Historically, PVH has not had a strong advertising presence of its own, preferring to let its department store customers market their products within its stores.

On October 4, 2007, PVH took over naming rights to the Meadowlands Sports Complex arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The arena's name was changed to the Izod Center, and the change became effective on October 31, 2007. The corporation will pay about $1.3 million a year over the next five years for the naming rights, and will handle marketing for arena events.

Environmental practices

In July 2011, PVH—along with other major fashion and sportswear brands including Nike, Adidas and Abercrombie & Fitch—was the subject of a report by the environmental group Greenpeace entitled "Dirty Laundry". PVH is accused of working with suppliers in China who, according to the findings of the report, contribute to the pollution of the Yangtze and Pearl Rivers. Samples taken from one facility belonging to the Youngor Group located on the Yangtze River Delta and another belonging to the Well Dyeing Factory Ltd. located on a tributary of the Pearl River Delta revealed the presence of hazardous and persistent hormone disruptor chemicals, including alkylphenols, perfluorinated compounds, and perfluorooctane sulfonate.

PVH responded with a commitment to Detox the Textile industry.