Бренд Bugatchi отмечает 45-летие: французско-марокканский основатель видит будущее в расширении спортивной линии и передаче управления сыновьям

Cecile Revah feels blessed. Her brand Bugatchi is celebrating its 45 th anniversary and has more than 1,000 retail customers, a solid design and research team, and a robust shop-in-shop program, plus two of her sons are immersed in the business. So the cofounder and chief executive officer of the men’s company sees a bright future. Revah is French Moroccan and was born in Casablanca. She moved to Montreal when she was 6 and lived there for 26 years. Although her family wasn’t involved in apparel or retail, her brother Daniel operated a couple of stores in Canada and it was there that Revah got her first taste of the business. The stores didn’t last, but in 1981, the siblings got together to launch Bugatchi. You May Also Like “At that time, we identified a clear opportunity,” she said. “Italian designers were front and center — Versace, Armani — but there was a lack of Italian-inspired clothing that combined quality, design and wearability at the level that we envisioned. Everything else was very designer and very expensive. Our goal was to offer something elevated yet accessible, bringing aspirational standards and quality into everybody’s life and it was very well received.” The name was originally Bugatchi Uomo and was created by the siblings as a nod to the Italian aesthetic. “We wanted to make sure it sounded Italian because everything that was Italian-inspired was so important,” she said. Several years in, her brother exited the day-to-day operation of the brand to focus on real estate in Quebec and Ontario, but he still distributes Bugatchi in Canada. Revah and her husband Richard Abitbol live in Boca Raton, Fla., where the brand is headquartered, and Bugatchi operates a permanent showroom in New York City. Bugatchi started out as just a shirt brand, and they still represent about 45 percent of sales. But two years after it launched, Revah and her husband moved to New York to open the U.S. market and expanded the brand into a lifestyle collection that now also encompasses pants, sweaters, swimwear, shorts, outerwear, suits, sport coats and accessories. The brand also has a successful golf business and sells to high-end resorts and green-grass shops including Pebble Beach and other clubs across America. Revah said the brand’s Oooh Cotton shirts — a proprietary fabric that is double mercerized with eight-way stretch and wrinkle-resistant properties — is among the bestsellers. “We’ve sold over 3 million shirts in the past five-and-a-half years,” she said. There’s also Aerotech, a fiber technology used in blazers and dress pants that delivers strength and shape retention. Also popular are the Essentials basic cotton shirts and T-shirts which the brand is able to set up for weekly reorders. There are also linen shirts, blends, patterned and other “special shirts,” that are also part of the mix. In all its products, Bugatchi puts an emphasis on offering innovative materials as a differentiator. “The most important thing for me is to always make sure that we have something new and different, and there’s a reason for the customer to buy,” she said. For spring 2027, the brand introduced a triple-weave fabric that Revah claimed will “revolutionize the dress shirt market. We have a lot of majors and also specialty stores that have already started buying it.” But she stressed her customers buy the entire collection. “The business is well distributed and customers are buying across the board, not just the shirts,” she said, declining to provide a volume figure because the company is private. In addition to running the business end of the brand, Revah oversees design. “I wear many hats and design is something I’ve always loved,” she said. “I’ve been playing the creative director role for quite a while.” But in 2022, she brought Anthony Keegan on board as creative director. The former designer for Canada Goose and DKNY Jeans stayed at Bugatchi for three-and-a-half years. “He still does projects for us,” Revah said. “The nice part about Anthony is that he was able to put brand and design together, which was really important for the company to elevate everything.” That led to the hiring of Omar Bertona, formerly of Isaia, Caruso and Maurizio Baldassari, as head of design following Keegan’s departure. Bertona, who is based in Milan, developed a luxury Made in Italy line, called Italian Daydream, that is priced around 40 to 50 percent higher than the core line. In the main line, shirts retail for $199 to $295 while the Made in product starts at $350 and goes to $499. Sweaters, which are mostly made in Turkey, retail for $295 to $395 for the core line and $395 to $900 for the Italian collection. Revah said the higher-price Italian collection has been well received among the company’s better doors and Bugatchi has also been able to incorporate some of the characteristics of that collection into its core line. Although Bugatchi is exclusively menswear, Revah said that around 41 percent of its customers are actually women buying for their partners, who tend to be between 35 and 50 years old, love sports, have hobbies and are seeking clothing “that makes him proud without having to spend the kind of money that is necessary if you want to wear designer brands.” Although Bugatchi has “dabbled” in womenswear over the years, it’s not currently offered or even in the cards. “We decided to stop women’s only because men’s was becoming more and more important for us, and we wanted to focus on it,” she said, “and we don’t regret it.” What she also doesn’t regret is that Bugatchi sells exclusively through wholesale and its own e-commerce channels. The brand is offered at a wide range of specialty stores as well as majors such as Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Harry Rosen and Bloomingdale’s. Her goal, she said, is to have goods in the store as quickly as possible at the start of the season. “I never want to wait until the season has actually launched. October is still the bestselling month, but for me to get goods in the stores in August is really important.” Within several of her specialty store clients, however, Bugatchi has negotiated a larger presence. “We started shop-in-shops about a year ago, and we’re very excited about where that’s going,” she said. “We should be able to have 15 between now and the end of 2027.” Among the retailers with Bugatchi shops are Euromoda in Puerto Rico and J.H. & Sons in Des Moines, Iowa, which opened last year. This month, Bugatchi will open two new shops at Fitzgerald’s in Grand Rapids, Mich., and the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Fla. “There are quite a few more in the pipeline,” she said. “Hopefully, in the next six to 12 months, we’ll have another 10 or so.” She described the shop-in-shop strategy as “a real estate play. We’re choosing our stores very carefully because we really wanted to stand out and to make sure the store has enough space for us to actually make a statement, and they’re doing very nicely. We’re hoping that we’re going to get close to $1,500 to $1,800 a square foot.” The shops are also giving Revah a taste of what it would be like to have a store of her own someday. “We’re hoping to go into retail. But that’s something that won’t happen until probably 2028 and onwards.” Looking to the future, Revah said that after 45 years, she is “optimistic for what still lies ahead. This anniversary has given us the opportunity to reflect on the defining moments of what shaped Bugatchi and consider what we can do in the future.” She pointed to the collaboration the brand had with in 1991 where Bugatchi created a collection for the athlete of everything other than sports apparel. “The partnership lasted three years, and he was wonderful. It was such a nice way to really get into the sports arena.” She hinted that Bugatchi will be getting more involved in sports as it looks to its next chapter. Revah said that Bugatchi has no outside investors, allowing them to “make all the decisions ourselves. It’s not just about the income, it’s about what you do and how you get out there.” And while Revah has no immediate plans to retire, she can be assured that Bugatchi will be in good hands when it’s the right time. Of her three sons, the oldest is in real estate in Miami, but Stephane has been with the brand since 2018 and oversees corporate development and legal, while Michael, who joined in 2019, leads brand strategy and content creation. “When you’ve been doing it for 45 years, it’s really nice to have that younger generation come in and help lead the way into what’s really going on in the market today,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot from them. They bring a new perspective and it’s really nice to have them.”