Underneath.com returns after a three-year absence
Underneath LLC, once a leading retailer in brand name men’s and women’s underwear, today relaunched its Underneath.com web site after nearly a three-year absence. The site is backed by Stone Apparel, which owns the majority of the stock, says Jeff Johnson, marketing director of Underneath.com. Stone Apparel is one of the largest boxer short makers in the world.
Underneath shut down its web site in May 2002 after efforts to sell the site during the dot-com boom led to financial problems.
“My mindset was kind of foolish at that time,” says Johnson, Underneath.com’s founder. “My focus went off the company and on selling it. I thought with all these $1 million valuations that were mind-boggling, I was going to capitalize on that.”
But because of the focus on selling the company, Johnson says he didn’t react to financial setbacks such as the loss of the Calvin Klein underwear product line, which accounted for 30% of the site’s revenue. At the time, Calvin Klein was setting up its on online business and wanted to sell its underwear exclusively at its own site, he says.
Calvin Klein wanted to buy Underneath.com for $3 million and merge it into its site, but the deal fell through when Calvin Klein began to have financial problems, Johnson says.
In addition, sales plummeted in late 2001, he says. “We never had any investors in our company,” he says. “We didn’t have any cushion of money in the bank and we fizzled out. We couldn’t sustain our business. I think we could have survived had I just kept my eye on the business and didn’t get greedy.”
Brands featured on the site include Calvin Klein, Champion, Munsingwear, Hanky Panky Thongs, Bali, Hanes, Maidenform and Just My Size.
Underneath.com, originally set up in 1997, was ranked as one of Internet Retailer’s Best of the Web online retailers in 2000. At that time it had 320,000 monthly visitors and more than $1 million in sales.
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