Carriage Couture

By Sarah Raper Larenaudie

Thinking Small

Three brands illustrate why the newest horizon in the booming luxury market is one of the smallest in scale as they cater to the fast-growing children's market with unique products and charm

Sometimes the next big opportunity is continents away; at other times it's in the backyard. In Paris, word has it that the high-end children's-wear brand Bonpoint is in play. Several luxury purveyors--including the Pinault family, whose retail holdings include Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent--have expressed interest. Bonpoint, the quintessential Parisian brand, is known for meticulous detailing and classics with a fizz in sizes 0 to 16. The company is both desirable and underexposed, and the Pinaults are well placed to observe the little consumers-in-training--their family mansion near the Luxembourg Gardens overlooks Bonpoint's palatial new flagship store.

All parties deny a sale is afoot (so expect an announcement any day, goes the thinking), but whatever the outcome, the speculation has turned the spotlight on the luxury children's-wear category in general and more specifically on Bonpoint, which has always asserted the charm of Liberty prints and pin tucks over high-decibel, mini-me ensembles. Bonpoint is less a demonstration of that old clunker "good taste," with its black-or-white dress-code overtones, than of the marvelous French notion of un gout sur: almost anything can work so long as it's not overdone, the proportions are considered, and it's pulled together with style--along with good shoes ("Properly shod, children can go anywhere," Bonpoint founder Marie-France Cohen likes to say).

The aesthetic suited Charlotte Gainsbourg's parents, icons Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, in the late '70s when Bonpoint was still a mom-and-pop operation off the Boulevard St. Germain, with founder Cohen in the studio and her husband Bernard keeping the books. Over the years, the business grew, and the couple opened stores in various capitals. In 2003, 33 years after opening their first boutique, the Cohens sold 70% of the company to Edmond de Rothschild Capital Partners, an investment group specializing in growing small and medium-size companies for resale. At a recent press conference, Bonpoint executives noted that their expansion plan was in full swing: annual sales growth averages 14%, with estimated sales of $54.9 million in 2006. The company has opened 20 new boutiques in three years, for a total of 60 shops by the end of the year, including stores relocated on prime luxury-shopping streets in Paris, London and New York City and new ones opening in Asia, where Japan is Bonpoint's top priority.

Bonpoint does not advertise, so the stores and their whimsical windows are the main way of communicating with customers. None have had more impact than the 12,000-sq.-ft. Left Bank flagship at 6 Rue de Tournon, which opened last April, says Eric de Montgolfier, a managing partner at Edmond de Rothschild. The store, which Bonpoint executives claim is the largest luxury children's shop in the world, occupies the ground floor of a 17th century hotel particulier and winds around a large neat garden to a newer wing. Shoppers and their parents wander through parlors with fireplaces, moldings and parquet de Versailles, and the 300-piece collection is deployed throughout. Boys' clothing is in the back, shoes are up the stairs, and there's a VIP room for celebrity clients. Children head straight for the playhouse in the center of the main parlor, and nearly everyone stops to gawk at the flower bed growing from the ceiling. The average purchase at the store slightly tops Bonpoint's $200-a-customer standard, but is way shy of its most profitable store, on Paris' Avenue Montaigne, where customers buy outfits in multiples--one for every house they own. Plus, the new store has attracted a different clientele and generated tremendous press coverage. When the restaurant opens downstairs in December, it will be the closest that a shopping experience could possibly come to an afternoon at a French auntie's country chateau. "The opening of Tournon radically changed outside perceptions of the brand," says de Montgolfier. "It leaves no doubt that Bonpoint is a true luxury lifestyle brand."

Surprisingly, in the scramble by luxury houses to identify new categories for development, children's wear has been neglected compared to hot sectors like home interiors or watches and jewelry, despite optimal demographic trends. In developed economies, parents are having fewer children and having them later, but as a result they are spending more lavishly on them. Industry insiders talk about the "six-pocket" syndrome in which an only child is spoiled not only by his parents but also by both sets of grandparents, who are living longer and are wealthier than ever. In fact, many high-profile women's ready-to-wear brands offer children's wear--Christian Dior was the first, launching Baby Dior in 1967--but they are typically produced under license by outside manufacturers and rely heavily on the brand name and logo. They are very successful in the gift category but offer a limited number of pieces.

"Bonpoint is completely different," says Richard Alibert, president of the company. "We are focused only on children and on dressing them every day." Although making kids' clothes might seem to be a simple matter of adapting design and manufacturing techniques to smaller sizes, he and others say it's much trickier. To cover the 0-to-14-year-old market requires 25 sizes with drastically different designs depending on whether a baby is lying down or starting to sit up, or whether he or she is still in diapers. Most items must be washable, and they must be comfortable--no scratchy fabrics or seams allowed. Even when pants cost $89, knit tops $76, parkas $356 and astrakhan pieces go for $763, as they do at Bonpoint, the profit margins are lower than those for grownups, since high-end customers seek top-quality fabrics and subtle trims and detailing but expect children's clothing--even expensive children's clothing--to cost significantly less than their own. And there are fewer opportunities for high-margin add-ons. Even the most precocious Bonpoint customers have little need for leather handbags, although the current management has high hopes for developing perfumes and skin-treatment lines.

The complications come into focus at the Bonpoint creative studio on Wednesdays, when French schoolchildren have the day off. Like all Paris fashion houses, Bonpoint has a roster of "house models" who are paid (in pains au chocolat and clothing vouchers) to do fittings. First there's a story, maybe a moment on someone's lap, and if ever there are tears or fussing, the fitting is called off.

Alas, brand loyalty is short lived. Once Karl Lagerfeld has seduced a girl, Chanel can hope to keep her for life. At Bonpoint, customers grow up and move on, so every 10 years the company must attract new ones. That is where the Cohens excelled. "I always insisted that we have someone in the studio with a baby in her arms," says Marie-France. In 1993 she hired Domitille Brion as a studio designer. "My jeunesse," Marie-France says whenever she refers to Brion, who is now an independent consultant. Together, over 10 years they honed the key codes that the current Bonpoint team of designers still references. If people want pink--and 65% of sales for little girls are pink--give them verdigris, says Marie-France. "Bonpoint is not here to serve customers the soup they asked for, but to propose something they didn't know they wanted."

Aesthetically, Cohen drew on her childhood experiences in Paris, where she grew up in an artistic family of eight children. (Many of her siblings went on to do their own creative thing--a sister, who died in 1999, founded Annick Goutal perfumes; another is an illustrator and designs theater decors.) "Our mother didn't have a lot of money, but the word we heard most often was regardez. Look at all the beautiful buildings in Paris. Look at the paintings, the furniture," Marie-France will tell you if you push the garden gate to the home she and Bernard purchased with the proceeds from the sale of the company, appropriately two doors down from a school. "You were told to train your eye, and always there was a disassociation of beauty and taste from the idea of money. That is the secret."