Johnnie-O is taking the plunge into womenswear.
The Santa Monica-based men’s brand known for its surfer logo and West Coast prep aesthetic will introduce its first women’s capsule collection on Friday. The lifestyle line of sweaters, pants, shorts, dresses, tank tops and T-shirts will launch online and in a handful of the company’s own retail stores. The inaugural collection is small — intentionally — so the company can test the waters before a larger assortment is offered later in the year.
“We’ve always had a really big family following,” said John Collins, who joined the company as chief executive officer in September. “We feel like we’ve really got our feet under us in men’s and boys’, so it’s the right time in our product development to launch women’s.”
Collins said the women’s line will offer the “same quality, attention to detail and superior fit that they have come to expect from our men’s and boys’ lines.” It will feature the same fabrics as well and will retail for $58 to $258. “The hand of the fabric we use is buttery and amazing,” Collins said. “I can’t imagine any woman who wouldn’t be attracted to it.”
“The women’s capsule collection is a great representation of where Johnnie-O has been and where we are going,” added Emily Carstens, product design and visual merchandising manager. “One story that I love is our cashmere Coastal Sweater — one style with big block East Coast lettering and one with West Coast lettering. These sweaters are a nod to the brand’s founding story and bringing the best of both worlds together.”
In addition to the sweater, the collection features shirts and shirt-dresses with the company’s patented Tweener Button, a small button hidden between the second and third button to bridge the gap between them. “Men have applauded us for this offering for years, and so we saw an opportunity to pull the Tweener Button into the women’s collection with our Anya dress and the Natalia and Jess button-down shirts so women can have the ability to customize the neckline to their liking,” Carstens said.
Johnnie-O got its start offering apparel for men and boys.
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The women’s collection will be available at two Johnnie-O stores in the Dallas area: Southlake Town Square and Preston Royal Shopping Center. It will also be added to a store in Cherry Creek in Denver when that opens this summer.
Johnnie-O operates nine stores across the U.S.
Collins said the company will expand the women’s line through the spring and summer, and by fall, will create a “robust” collection. “We wanted to start with lifestyle product before we went into performance,” he said. “Johnnie-O is all about connecting people, so lifestyle was the best choice for the brand launch.”
In the future, Collins said the company will consider offering the women’s line to wholesale accounts. “We’re not about direct only,” he stressed. “I’m a big proponent of omnichannel, but we want to make sure we have the demand we think we have first. It’s important for us to get it right.”
Collins said he has no projection on how big women’s could ultimately become for Johnnie-O. “We’ll have to see where it goes, but the wives and female partners of our male customers keep demanding women’s, so it could be 20 percent or 40 percent, I don’t know. But I do know that we’re committed to it.”
The brand was founded by John O’Donnell in 2005 and started out with wedge-collar pique polo shirts. It has since expanded into a full lifestyle brand for men and boys with annual sales of around $200 million. In 2022, it sold a minority stake for $108 million to Wasatch Global Investors and Ares Management Corp. For 16 of its 17 years in business, Collins said, the company has posted sales growth of more than 20 percent annually. Last year, it managed high-single-digit growth, he said, and this year has started off strongly.
