Yet it doesn’t take long for a brand to become a classic, though the period around 20 years is a challenging time, as the brand has baggage from its recent past, yet it has a need to also stay fresh and new. Take Stussy; a vintage shirt is shown at right. We pulled a bit of history from their site:

In 1980, Shawn Stussy was a local cult surfboard shaper who took his scrawled signature logo from his foam masterpieces and applied it to tee shirts that he sold along with his boards around Laguna Beach, California.

As the clothing line expanded, its raw and modern aesthetic soon developed into the next generation of new wave beach culture. We grew during a time when epochal shifts which eternally framed contemporary popular culture were taking place.

On the fashion site HighSnobiety.com, a writer mulls this season:

I like some of them but is it me or Stussy became a dead brand around the world like LRG?

We can’t tell whether Stussy is fresh or dead, and we are not sure it is an “epochal shift” but that Stussy made it 25 years and still engenders interest is a pretty good sign it is moving to some sort of classic.

That’s the simple premise of Garanimals. And they are back this February 2008 at Wal-Mart.

It’s the perfect brand to bring back. The public knows the brand story. Its simple; match the animals, and the clothes match.

The line was founded in 1972, though Garan, the company, dates from 1941. The line never completely disappeared; the relaunch is the first major advertising for the company in years.

The company Garan was independent until 2002, when it was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway. Garan had been mostly a manufacturer, jobbing out clothes for Wal-Mart, as well as selling licensed clothing under brands like Everlast and Hang Ten. The re-launch advertising of Garanimals was done by the firm Gardner Nelson + Partners.

Perhaps the most famous revived brand in the U.S. is Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF). The company was once an old-line sporting goods company selling guns and tents to presidents and such. Today, American mall-goers are so mesmerized by the half-naked teens of today’s Abercrombie that we forget that it was a carriage trade store. In the 1920s, the store’s most notable feature was a log cabin which sat atop its building at Madison Avenue and 45th Street. Immortalized in Lisa Birnbach’s The Official Preppy Handbook for their “signature English tackle bags,” Abercrombie’s most popular floors were the “adult game and odd equipment floors.”In her seminal book, Lisa Birnbach was quite prescient about the value of great American retail brands; it is arguable that she reinvigorated many an old-line retailer by establishing these old brands’ relevance for young audiences. She took grey-flannel retailers into the youth Reagan revolution by mere mention. In her book, Paul Stuart, Brooks Brothers and J. Press were all featured, with addresses. The effect on sales was immediate.

Birnbach featured four “R.I.P” retailers in her book – Abercrombie, Best & Co., Peck and Peck and DePinna. Since the book, three have returned.

Here they are.

• First, Abercrombie & Fitch came back. A&F went bankrupt and folded in 1977, only to be revived two years later as a luxury sporting goods retailer in Beverly Hills. It later morphed into the unnecesarily sexualized retailer that it is today.
• In 1997, Susie Hilfiger, wife of Tommy Hilfiger, revived Best & Co. as a boutique in Greenwich, Conn.
• And recently, Peck & Peck has been increasingly featured at Stein Mart Inc. (SMRT) as a private label brand, according to an article by Diana Middleton in the Jacksonville Times-Union. It has grown because Ralph Lauren has pulled back from off-price discount chains. Brilliant move!
• Is DePinna next?

An interesting side-note: the old Best & Co. department store building at 372 Fifth Avenue has been renovated into lofts. The building was also notable as it housed another great old dead retail brand, Bond, the snazzy men’s store made famous in those Times square photos for its “two trousers suits.” The 372 Fifth location of Bond was re-branded by the great Miami modern architect Morris Lapidus after Best & Co. left.

BrandlandUSA Case Study

When reviving a dead brand, it is important to not try to recreate what was; it is more important to capture the spirit, and do something that is sustainable. The most important thing is success. Like Guinness, good things come to those who wait.

When Susie Hilfiger revived Best & Co. in 1997, it was not revived in its original form, which was a major department store. Instead, she built the brand as a smaller, more manageable retail boutique in Greenwich. She took an existing small business and re-named it Best & Co. Purists might grumble that it was not the giant Best & Co. of the old days (of course it wasn’t!); instead it was a new interpretation that responded to its market of WASPs and WASP wanna-be’s. Equally as important, the re-launch was equal to the capital at hand.

In time, the company can be built into the Best & Co. of old. It took years for the old Best to become what it was. And Abercrombie & Fitch could still move back into the elite sporting goods arena. In fact, in recent years it has been pushing the athleticism of teens; what would be a brilliant masterstroke would be to market sporting products instead of teen sex to the A&F audience. Take the company back to what it was, without losing the teen market.

At one time, there were 54 stores. The Carroll Reed Ski Shops Inc. was started, not by some matronly woman, but by Carroll Purinton Reed, a clever entrepreneur who not only built the company but promoted skiing in the Northeast. He was instrumental in developing Mt. Cranmore as a ski destination and had a key role in promoting skiing in New England. He became involved in retailing with the department store Saks Fifth Avenue, which had a ski store (way cool idea, by the way) in North Conway. When that store was shut down, Reed re-opened the shop under his own name.

It grew to over 50 stores. Reed sold the chain in 1969. By 1985, it was owned by Charles M. Leighton’s CML Group, which also owned prep icon Boston Whaler and The Nature Company. CML sold the company to Swire Pacific in 1990. It was mostly downhill after that. Reed died in 1995. Apparently, Carroll Reed and the separate company Carroll Reed Ski Shops were even in rent disputes in Maine in 1994. (We would love to see what Harvard Business School prof Howard Stevenson thought about the brand, as it is one of his case studies.) It was later purchased by D.M. Management, which later became J. Jill, for just over $6 million.

Carroll Reed had a sad ending, with the company shutting it down in 1996. Reading the Securities and Exchange filings on the brand are pitiful, though it seems that J. Jill Group Inc. did try to sell the customer list and trademark. What is pitiful is that when President and C.E.O. Gordon Cooke issued his statement on the closing, he said that Carroll Reed’s targeting the younger and more “price conscious” market has not meshed well with its other brands. We wonder whether the brand had completely lost its focus, which was monied and had a wide spectrum of consumers. Targeting a price conscious market is a sure recipe for failure for such a brand.

Today, some of this ski history relating to the brand is being preserved by Jeremy Davis’ group NELSAP, which stands for the New England Lost Ski Areas Project. And Stan and Dan Sports, run by Stan Millen and Dan Lewis, two guys who worked at Carroll Reed, are keeping the legacy alive in North Conway. And places like the non-profit Gibson Center, which offers services to seniors, have a room named after Carroll and Kay Reed.

We caught up with style maven Heather “Bunny” Tomerlin for a quick couple of questions by email. Bunny, who is a columnist for the online blog of Men’s Vogue, recently featured a Carroll Reed red jacket on her self-named personal style blog. The idea we posed to her? How to bring back Carroll Reed. BrandlandUSA’s thought? Perhaps it might be a good brand for The Talbot’s to revive, as its partial menswear and ski and sport focus would help balance out other Talbot’s brands, that include J. Jill.

BrandlandUSA: What was so great about the Carroll Reed?
Tomerlin: Carroll Reed was an outstanding chain for skiwear and outerwear. When I think of the Carroll Reed brand, I think of classic women’s clothing, even though their catalog was about 10 percent menswear.

BrandlandUSA: Was there an essence to the brand?
Tomerlin: Yes, I believe there was and the essence was women who preferred enduring styles and had an eye for the emblems of quality and distinction. Frankly, I would say the preppy women of the Eastern Seaboard were the brand essence. The clothes bordered between cute and matronly.

BrandlandUSA: Was there a person who wore the brand that made it seem worthwhile?
Tomerlin: Well, I can’t think of one person who made the brand appealing, but the women who influenced my style of dress wore Carroll Reed. My mother and grandmother both wore the wool ski jackets as I still do today.

BrandlandUSA: What was the brand like during its last days?
Tomerlin: It had become a mostly mail order enterprise.

BrandlandUSA: What are some of your memories of the brand in its heyday?
Tomerlin: Well, I remember when my mother bought me my first ski sweater. We were going to Brattleboro, Vermont for Thanksgiving and stopped off in Westport, Connecticut to do a little shopping and there was a Carroll Reed store in Westport. Actually, she bought me two, one navy and one in creme. Another fond memory would be receiving the catalogs; they always had a beautiful New Hampshire landscape on the cover.

BrandlandUSA: If you were relaunching the brand, what would you do?
Tomerlin: Well, I guess I would open a few high-end retail stores. I would open them to test the markets in Boston, Manhattan and Washington, D.C.

BrandlandUSA: Who is the target market today? Is the target market of the old Carroll Reed the same target market that the new should have?
Tomerlin: The target market would be women between the ages of 25 to 65 who dress conservatively and economically but have the means to buy. I think the target market should be somewhat younger than before. The old Carroll Reed targeted women 40-65. The people who find the Carroll Reed Ski Shop brand charming are ageless.

Brands mentioned by this Men’s Vogue blogger include Carroll Reed, Gloverall, Neese’s Sausage, Bazzini’s Pistachio Nuts, Kinloch Anderson, Brickman’s of Martha’s Vineyard, Petit Bateau, Schiaperelli, Rody Horses, Filson, Smiths Rosebud Salve, Tervis Tumblers, Chris Craft, Dale of Norway, C. O. Bigelow mints, Dubarry Boots, Stubbs & Wooton, Murray’s Toggery, Piggly Wiggly and iomoi matches.

Note. The above are all good brands that are not in trouble, except for Carroll Reed, which ought to return.

Note to readers: Read her Q&A on Bringing Back Carroll Reed.