What started as a little tailored vintage clothing store on La Brea Avenue blossomed into a billion-dollar company. <\/p>\n
Reformation, the women\u2019s clothing company, is known for its sustainable<\/a> mission and slogan: \u201cBeing naked is the #1 most sustainable option. We\u2019re #2.\u201d <\/p>\n Its clothes have been spotted on the shoulders of celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Hailey Bieber for more than a decade, but it wasn\u2019t until last week that Reformation was listed on the stock market, and with a rise in its share price midday Monday, its market value climbed above $950 million. <\/p>\n It has been a stunning rise, starting with management and manufacturing out of Los Angeles and expanding to 70 locations, mainly in the United States, with 13 in California and storefronts in Canada, France and the United Kingdom. It plans to use the money it raised to open 12 to 14 stores each year. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still really early on in our inning,\u201d Reformation Chief Executive Hali Borenstein said in an interview with CNBC. \u201cWe have less than 1% penetration of our core market, and so you\u2019re going to see a lot more from us.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, some consumers and analysts are concerned that growing too much could damage the brand and the quality and sustainability it is known for. <\/p>\n \u201cAt one point I feel like Reformation was trying to grow too fast, and that\u2019s where they lost sight of quality,\u201d Jessica Ramirez, co-founder of the Consumer Collective, a consumer insights company, said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want that same pressure to come back once they\u2019re public, which is what tends to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n The apparel company <\/a>was founded by Yael Aflalo, a California native, in 2009. It started with Aflalo customizing vintage clothing in the back of a store and selling it before transitioning to producing its own clothing using sustainable materials. <\/p>\n In 2013, Aflalo started designing and manufacturing clothes along with tailoring, and began selling them through a website. Reformation opened a factory in Los Angeles the same year. At the time, the company was best known for its dresses, but over the next few years expanded its offerings to more apparel.<\/p>\n Reformation opened its first international stores in Toronto and London in 2019, when it partnered with private equity firm Permira to further scale. Aflalo continued to lead the company until 2020, when Borenstein took over as CEO.<\/p>\n On its website, the company lists Tencel, recycled cotton and dead-stock fabrics as some of its preferred materials to meet its sustainability standards. It also discusses practices such as limited collections it uses to keep the environmentally friendly label. <\/p>\n It found a niche of fashionable consumers who wanted cutting-edge clothes you could wear to a wedding but also something that could last and was better for the environment than mass-produced products. <\/p>\n \u201cThey were a sustainable apparel brand that wasn\u2019t a potato sack,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cFor a long time, that\u2019s really what we had: product that was sustainable and it wasn\u2019t good-looking\u201d.<\/p>\n The brand emphasizes that its pieces are meant to last even with heavy use and not just be tossed. <\/p>\n One Reformation fan once wrote in the New Yorker <\/a>that the brand\u2019s sustainable, minimalist dresses developed a cult following for finding the right price point, \u201cmostly priced in the low three digits \u2014 just the right amount to blur the lines between those who thought of a two-hundred-and-eighteen-dollar jumpsuit as an affordable basic and those for whom it would be an impractical splurge.\u201d<\/p>\n Although it has done well in its sweet spot, it could face the headwinds that many hot brands do as they struggle to grow beyond their hardcore fans and remain relevant. <\/p>\n Reformation has tried to position itself outside of other millennial brands, analysts say, but the cyclical nature of the apparel market<\/a> makes the category a tough sell.<\/p>\n