Fashion developer and marketer R.G. Barry Corp is expanding its accessories interests with the purchase of casual handbag label Baggallini.
Company chief executive officer Greg Tunney says the acquisition will see the company grow from a one-dimensional slipper label to a multi-faceted accessories brand.
The numbers certainly suggest that R.G. Barry Corp’s made the right move. As it dealt exclusively with slippers, it only accessed around 2% of the women’s accessories market, a sector worth some $30 billion. Baggallini proved itself as a brand on the up by posting growth of around 19% between the years of 2006 to 2010. R.G. Barry Corp’s senior vice president of finance said Baggallini ticked all the boxes.
“It is asset light, cash generating and will be immediately accretive to earnings; it expands our customer and consumer demographic bases; and it will benefit from backroom synergies with our existing enterprises,” he explained.
We shouldn’t expect things to change too much for Baggallini though. The handbag brand will continue to operate from its Portland, Oregon base as a wholly-owned subsidiary. I can’t imagine R.G. Barry Corp will want to tweak those time-honored designs too much either. You know what they say about not fixing what isn’t broken!
