Wilsons Leather Women's Fashion Brand

Wilsons Leather is a U.S. leather retailer, selling products such as leather jackets, belts, shoes, handbags, and gloves - the shorter name Wilson is the form this directory's W hub uses. Wilsons Leather is a leading specialty retailer of quality accessories and outerwear. They are dedicated to providing luxury and style at exceptional values for the fashion conscious consumer: the position in one sentence, a specialty leather retailer selling the luxury register at value prices, and the women's range on this page is the outerwear-and-accessories half of that offer.

For a women's shopper, the product list is the map: leather jackets first, then the accessory ring around them - belts, shoes, handbags and gloves. This is not a full clothing line; it is a leather specialist's range, and the profile keeps it that way. A researcher should compare a Wilsons Leather women's piece against other leather specialists rather than against general outerwear brands, because leather construction - hide, lining, hardware and finish - is the whole of what the retailer sells.

1899 to 1988: Bermans Leather and the Merger

Their history dates back to 1899 as Bermans Leather, a leather garment manufacturer and factory outlet retailer. Bermans Leather and Wilsons House of Suede and Leather merged in 1988, becoming the firm you know today as Wilsons Leather. Two dated facts carry the whole company history: an 1899 origin as a maker-and-outlet business under the Bermans name, and a 1988 merger of two leather names - Bermans Leather and Wilsons House of Suede and Leather - that produced the modern firm and its name. The Wilsons half of the name, in other words, arrived through the merger partner, and the 1899 date belongs to the Bermans side.

The modern retail shape is stated just as plainly. Wilsons Leather currently operates under two formats. Their Wilsons Leather Outlet stores offer a variety of designer in-season products as well as special purchases and clearance items for both men and women. Categories include outerwear and accessories such as handbags, briefcases and travel items. The companies e-commerce site offers an extension of their store experience and is intended to increase brand awareness, strengthen the relationship with their customers, make their merchandise accessible to those outside the geographic reach of their stores, and facilitate cross-channel marketing - a four-purpose statement for the website that dates the profile's retail picture precisely.

The 2008 G-III Acquisition, and Researching the Brand

In July 2008, Wilsons Leather was acquired by outerwear company G-III Apparel Group, LTD - the ownership fact that closes the record, with the acquirer described by its own trade, outerwear. Learn more about the G-III Apparel Group on the company profile linked from this page, as is the Wilsons Leather brand news page; the brand's own site is in References. A researcher tracing the name should therefore read this profile as a three-era record: Bermans Leather from 1899, the merged Wilsons Leather from 1988, and a G-III-owned retailer from July 2008.

Among this letter's W brands, Wilsons Leather is the leather specialist set between two other outerwear names: Woolrich, the outdoor name dating to 1830, sells the wool-and-weather side of a cold-weather wardrobe, while Wilsons sells the leather side of it. Its 1899 origin also makes it, with Woman Within's 1901 dress shop, one of the two oldest roots in the letter - a factory-outlet leather maker that became, by merger and then acquisition, a national specialty retailer, with every step of that path dated.

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