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Lands' End wins friends by populating its catalog with real people, complete with wrinkles and middle-age spread. Often the models are employees or readers who have sent in photos of themselves along with suggestions for the catalog. In one recent issue, Roxanne Clouse and her teenage daughter Franny, who are customers from Amazonia, Mo., sported bathing suits. Says one appreciative customer: "I get tired of catalogs full of models who wear a size 3."
J. CREW. Based in Manhattan's up-and-coming Flatiron section and housed in a loft building with hardwood floors and exposed industrial pipes, J. Crew is far from folksy. The company's offerings are decidedly casual but with a note of sophistication. Arthur Cinader, 61, J. Crew's chairman, describes the J. Crew look as "understated flair." Cinader, whose family-owned firm operates a clothing-and-furnishings catalog business called Popular Club Plan, started J. Crew six years ago and had an almost instant hit.
The catalog offers stylish variations on some familiar themes in American sportswear. Besides selling a garden-variety pocket T shirt ($12), J. Crew offers a prewashed (or "weathered," as the catalog puts it) T shirt for $24 in 15 different colors, including watermelon, tangelo and mango. Other characteristic items: Shaker cotton sweaters ($38) and unlined canvas jackets ($68). This year J. Crew is branching into clothes for the office as well. Fall offerings will include a wool V-neck dress ($128) and a men's herringbone-tweed jacket (about $250).
J. Crew is a family affair: Cinader's 28-year-old daughter Emily is the firm's president and chief of design, though she had no previous business experience when she joined the company in late 1982. Another daughter, Maud, 23, directs location photography for J. Crew. Nepotism may work: the company expects that its catalog sales this year will reach $150 million, up 50% from 1988.
TWEEDS. Since its first catalog was shipped less than two years ago, Tweeds has become the spunky and surprisingly successful upstart in the crowd. Estimated revenues for the current fiscal year: $37 million. Compared with its rivals, Tweeds' offerings are typically funkier, looser-fitting and more cosmopolitan, "classics with a European twist," as Tweeds President Jeff Aschkenes, 46, puts it. Many outfits are made of linen, this year's trendy fabric, and come in offbeat colors. Examples: pleated, prewashed linen trousers ($59) available in Moroccan brown, sage, cadet or flax; and cotton- Lycra pants ($29) in the colors of sky and palm. Tweeds' designers take about four trips to Europe each year to observe -- and sometimes borrow -- the latest Continental fashions and fabrics.
Based in a 100-year-old converted brick mill in Paterson, N.J., Tweeds is the creation of refugees from rival J. Crew. Ted Pamperin, 48, Tweeds' chairman, had worked as J. Crew's executive vice president and Aschkenes as its merchandising director. Though paid well at J. Crew, the two partners were frustrated entrepreneurs. Says Aschkenes: "We didn't want to be sitting on rocking chairs when we were 80 years old, never having tried it on our own." They raised $6 million in venture capital financing and now control a minority interest in the firm. The rivalry with their former bosses should be lively since the renegades have hired 18 former employees of J. Crew.