Kenneth Cole Productions

Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. is the New York footwear and fashion company founded in 1982 by Kenneth Cole, who famously launched his shoe business from a trailer parked outside the New York shoe show — and named the company 'Productions' because a production company could get the permit. The company designed, sourced and marketed footwear, handbags and apparel under Kenneth Cole New York, Kenneth Cole Reaction, Unlisted and Le Tigre, plus Gentle Souls footwear, trading on the New York Stock Exchange as KCP from 1994. In September 2012 Cole, who held about 46% of the shares and some 89% of the voting power, took the company private at $15.25 per share through his KCP Holdco vehicle, and it remains a private, founder-led business.

Company Profile

The channel arithmetic in the October 2013 summary — products marketed to approximately 5,200 U.S. department and specialty store locations, the company's own retail and outlet stores and its website, plus licensee partners and international retailers — describes the three-segment structure the summary names: Wholesale, Consumer Direct and Licensing. Few designer names of its generation balanced all three as evenly, which is why the brand could survive the closure of most of its stores in 2016 and continue as a wholesale-and-digital business.

The November 2004 summary adds the brand architecture of the growth years: core basics that remain in demand season after season set against fashion products that establish or capitalise on trends, priced from 'better' to 'moderate', across men's, women's and children's footwear, handbags, apparel and accessories — and the Bongo footwear licence, an early sign of the licensing programme that later carried names including Le Tigre and Gentle Souls.

The range behind the name is fashion footwear, handbags and apparel, and licensed apparel and accessories. Its customers are about 5,200 U.S. department and specialty locations, the company’s stores and website, and international licensees (in its listed years). That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Kenneth Cole Productions in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing Kenneth Cole Productions with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Taken private — founder Kenneth D. Cole acquired the company through KCP Holdco, Inc. in September 2012 at $15.25 per share; it continues as a private company — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

Company summaries of this kind were the working tool of the apparel trade as much as of investors: a buyer, landlord or supplier checking Kenneth Cole Productions could see its scale, its headquarters and its own description of its business in a few paragraphs. Those dated descriptions are kept with their dates, because a store count from 2013 or a strategy statement from 2019 is evidence about that year, not about today. The current position is the one given in the snapshot: taken private.