Denim & Supply, launched by Ralph Lauren Corp. (New York) in 2011, today will open its second U.S. store, and its first in New York, with a 4,000-square-foot shop at 99 University Place in Manhattan, the site of a former Rugby unit, reports Women’s Wear Daily. Earlier this month, D&S opened its first U.S. store on the site of another former Rugby location at 342 Newbury Street in Boston.
David Lauren, executive vice president of advertising, marketing and corporate communications for Ralph Lauren, told WWD that even if D&S occupies former Rugby spaces, it’s not a replacement for that brand. “Rugby was always Polo’s younger brother, and we thought that with such a wide audience, Polo could serve that customer very well going forward,” he said. “Denim has always been something we believed in, and every couple of years there’s a spark in the jeans market that takes it in a new direction. We look in the street and our offices and we see a market that’s in many ways untapped, and that’s even with denim represented throughout our collections.
Twelve freestanding D&S stores have been opened in Europe and Asia, where the collection is also carried in numerous specialty stores, and it has a presence in Macy’s stores throughout the U.S. Sweden has three stores, Norway and Hong Kong two each and Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, The Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates one unit each.
The expansion of D&S coincides with the company’s decision, disclosed last October, to discontinue its Rugby brand, as well as its accelerating effort to expand its retail portfolio, both in the U.S. and abroad, for a number of its brands, including Polo, women’s Blue Label, children’s and D&S.