Juicy Couture: A business that's oozing success

LOS ANGELES -- With their nearly waist-length hair, sky-high heels and matching outfits, the two co-founders of Juicy Couture look more like some of their high-style customers than their fellow corporate executives.

In public, the women known as the "Juicy Girls" resemble retail celebrities. At their flagship store on Rodeo Drive here, teenage girls swoon when they spot the women doing a photo shoot. Sixteen-year-old Kristen Wahlen of Memphis asks if she can join them in a giant bird-cage prop so her mom can snap a picture. A girl in a hot pink polka-dot shirt, pink flip-flops and head scarf appears trancelike, mouthing "Bye" when Skaist-Levy and Nash-Taylor wave as she leaves the store.

Just a few years ago, Skaist-Levy and Nash-Taylor were running a lesser-known brand that shared the limelight at the Liz Claiborne company with more traditional women's designers such as Sigrid Olsen and Dana Buchman.

Since then, Juicy has wrested the spotlight away. The Juicy brand may rankle some parents for its high prices and risqué slogans, including "I'm a Juicy Girl," but no one can deny it's taking retail by storm. As classic clothiers, including Ann Taylor and Talbot's, struggle to reverse falling sales, this 12-year-old tracksuit company is expanding into every facet of fashion, from $45 computer mouse/pad sets to $180 charm bracelets to $2,000 couture dresses — and defying the economic slowdown.

When Liz Claiborne acquired the label five years ago, annual sales were about $50 million. Liz Claiborne said Wednesday that Juicy's sales for the first six months of this year were $288 million, up 52% from the same period in 2007. Juicy is, by far, the most profitable of the 25 Liz Claiborne brands, analyst Jennifer Black says, adding that it will likely end this year with close to $700 million in sales. Black, of Jennifer Black & Associates, says Juicy could become a $2 billion brand within five years. (By contrast, only in 2000 did Polo Ralph Lauren, a 40-year-old brand, became a $2 billion company.)

"There aren't a lot of innovative, fun, whimsical brands out there," says Black, who owns several Juicy Couture tracksuits. Of the stores, which are often pink and filled with giant decanters of candy, she adds, "They are just fun places to go."