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Brama Group teams up with Riccardo Grassi to distribute US labels Cotton Citizen, Boyish Jeans in Europe
Brama Group has announced a partnership with Riccardo Grassi Showroom for the distribution of two new additions to Brama’s brand portfolio: Los Angeles-based Cotton Citizen, a t-shirts and jersey casualwear brand for men and women, and Californian women's denim label Boyish Jeans, whose strengths are wearability and fabric quality.
The collaboration will begin with the Spring/Summer 2019 season. Riccardo Grassi Showroom will take charge of the two labels’ distribution in Europe and in some other countries outside of the continent. It will act as an agent, tasked with building up a network of retailers on behalf of Brama Group.
Riccardo Grassi is the co-founder of renowned Milanese showroom Studio Zeta. In 2012, he set up his own organisation with a showroom measuring nearly 4,000 square metres, chiefly distributing high-end designer labels, such as Blancha, Brognano, Del Pozo, Drome, Erika Cavallini, Giamba, Giambattista Valli, Khrisjoy, Marco De Vincenzo, Mother of Pearl and MSGM, and also operating temporary showrooms in Paris and London during the Fashion Weeks.
Grassi’s high-end market positioning is therefore complementary to that of Brama Group, which is more focused on the premium segment. Brama was founded in the 1950s in Modena, Italy, as a knitwear manufacturer. In the 1990s, it transformed itself in a distribution company, working across Europe mostly for Californian brands, and operating seven showrooms in Milan, Paris, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Madrid, Düsseldorf and Munich.
“Riccardo Grassi Showroom is a major player in our sector, one we never regarded as a competitor, as it operates in a market segment different from ours, with more of a ‘designer’ positioning as opposed to our ‘contemporary cool’ one. A nice opportunity to work together came up, and we took it,” said Renzo Braglia, general manager of Brama Group, in a press release.
Brama Group is chiefly active as a distributor: it buys products directly from fashion labels and resells them to its retailer clients, offering logistics and re-stocking services. Sometimes it also acts as an agent, in other words a straightforward intermediary between labels and retailers, but it only does so rarely, for specific brands on specific markets.
The group currently prefers to focus on its core business (it recently closed down a PR office in Paris), resorting when necessary to external agents, as is the case of this partnership, in which Brama Group “will act as distributor for Cotton Citizen and Boyish Jeans, while Riccardo Grassi will work as an agent, covering a broad area, in Europe and worldwide.”
Brama Group has its own label, Fine Edge, a high-end knitwear line designed in California, and its brand portfolio also includes J Brand, Equipment, Current/Elliott, Mother, Frame, Norma Kamali, Opening Ceremony, Jean Atelier, The Script and Local Authority LA, plus the new entries Cotton Citizen and Boyish Jeans.
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