J.Lindeberg is a Swedish clothing company. Included in their range are golf and ski clothing, polo shirts, training clothes, jackets, suits and shirts.
="History">History
Founding
Johan Lindeberg founded the J.Lindeberg brand in 1996. Lindeberg who had been the marketing director of Diesel resigned from his duties at the Italian denim brand, fatigued from constantly restraining his own visions, and decided that he wanted to create something of his own. Whilst traveling through Europe on his motorcycle he visualized a fashion brand that reflected his personal and creative values.
Lindeberg launched his brand during the summer of 1996 in Stockholm and New York simultaneously. The brand was named J.Lindeberg after Lindeberg’s own signature. With a number of investors, and Lindeberg committing all his financial resources, two parallel offices where assembled, one in Stockholm’s port district and one on 57th street Manhattan in New York. As Creative Director Lindeberg assembled a small team of designers headed by Roland Hjort who was recruited from the Swedish apparel brand H&M.
21st Century Lifestyle
The first design concept was called 21st Century Lifestyle and the collection was showcased in New York during the Fashion Week Fall Winter 1997 Season, featuring men’s fashion and golf clothing. Lindeberg has always expressed a profound interest in active sports and the idea of transforming elements and ideas from the high fashion industry into sportswear. Since he had a past in one of the world's largest denim manufactures, it would have been obvious for him to build his brand around denim products, but Johan didn’t want J.Lindeberg to be labeled a denim brand. Therefore, he initially did no denim and instead he presented a 1960s rock 'n' roll-inspired look.
To further develop the golf concept, Lindeberg turned to his PGA-tour golfer Jesper Parnevik. Parnevik's character suited J.Lindeberg’s creative concept and added a professional value to the collections.
Critical acclaim
J.Lindeberg steadily gained momentum and became critically acclaimed by key figures in the fashion industry and early adopters on the streets. The first official award came in 1999 when Swedish Elle presented J.Lindeberg with the "Designer of the Year" award. The following year (2000) J.Lindeberg received the "Guldknappen" (golden button) award as "Most Innovative Designer". Later in 2000 J.Lindeberg opened its first flagship store in central Stockholm. Several more concept stores followed shortly in New York City, Tokyo, Yokohama and Los Angeles.
By 2002 J.Lindeberg's annual turnover had reached 219 million Swedish kroner selling at 500 stores worldwide. Lindeberg decided to feature his collections for the first time as a part of official New York Fashion Week Schedule in Bryant Park. At this point J.Lindeberg took a serious step onto the international high-end fashion scene and became the first Scandinavian brand to be featured in several international fashion editorials. J.Lindeberg has been worn on several official occasions by Bono from U2, Brad Pitt, Justin Timberlake, Ashton Kutcher, The Killers, and Jane's Addiction, among others.
In mid-2002, Lindeberg and his wife Marcella, whom he met at Diesel, permanently relocated to London to set up a base for J.Lindeberg's international marketing operations and a UK showroom with the purpose of expanding the brand in one of largest fashion markets in Europe. Short thereafter the first women's collection was revealed under the supervision of Marcella. Lindeberg also announced that J.Lindeberg would for the first time present a full denim concept for both men and women.
After appearing at the Milano Moda Uomo Fashion week, work began on reconstructing J.Lindeberg's worldwide stores to also carry the women's collection.
As work began on the women's collection Lindeberg revealed his new complement to the J.Lindeberg, the J.Lindeberg Future Sports. This concept fused futuristic attitudes and elements with retrospective design visions of the future, such as the Lamborghini race cars of the early 1990s. Apart from a full men's and women's collection J.Lindeberg Future Sports also carried a completely new store concept and the first store opened in central Stockholm. The season after its initiation the Future Sports Concept produced the first J.Lindeberg Ski Collection that was showcased together with the Fall/Winter 2005 season in Milan. The face of J.Lindeberg Ski became the renowned Swedish free skier Jon Olsson.
The J.Lindeberg Ski collection was exhibited at ISPO-fair in Germany where it won the "Newcomer of the Year" award. More concept collections would appear the following years, including, swimwear, sunglasses and shoes.
Restructuring
In 2007, the decreasing profitability of the company had begun to put heavy pressure on the relationship between Lindeberg and J.Lindeberg's major shareholders. The issues were resolved when the capital investment firm Proventus became the new principal owner of J.Lindeberg with Stefan Engström, who also became the company’s new CEO. Before committing to J.Lindeberg, Engström had been one of the co-founders of Swedish sports apparel brand Peak Performance, which had grown to become one of Sweden’s largest fashion exports.
In the wake of the restructure Lindeberg expressed a wish to become more creatively sovereign, weary his increasing administrative assignments Lindeberg wanted to focus on the creative concept of the brand and the inspiration of the collections. He returned to the role of Creative Director and relocated with Marcella back to New York.
The J.Lindeberg Ski Collection had been reintroduced, headed by Fredrik Dahl who used to be the design director at "The North Face". J.Lindeberg's retail stores were remade by the French/Swedish architect Albert Francois Lenoard. The first of the new store concepts to open was the Flagship Store on in central Stockholm.
Pierangelo D'Agostin was reappointed as Design Director with the responsibility of all concepts. He had been design director at Jil Sander and his own Japanese luxury brand hLam.
Today
Since 2012 J.Lindeberg has been owned by Anders Hoch Povlsen (founder and owner of Bestseller group), Dan Friis, Allan Warburg (also co-owners of Bestseller China) and Stefan Engström, CEO of J.Lindeberg. The company has expanded globally and now also has a Chinese business. There are over 215 branded stores and shop in shops worldwide and yearly brand sales of approximately 1.6 BN SEK per year.
The company continues to offer Fashion, Golf, Ski and Active Wear collections.
The design head office of all collections is situated in Stockholm where the international design team sits. As of January 2016, Lindeberg is back at with the company in the role of Creative Consultant.
For 2017 the brand has its sights set on digital expansion into North and South America and recently launched in Canada www.jlindebergusa.com David Feiner, acting Director of eCommerce says, "we believe there is a huge opportunity to capture the Canadian market, and we see the online channel as a catalyst. We look forward to quickly expanding into these new territories."
References
- J.Lindeberg USA-Canada
- J. Lindeberg
- (in Swedish) Dagens Nyheter: J Lindeberg äntligen lönsamt - "J Lindeberg finally making profit", September 11, 2004 article
- (in Swedish) Aftonbladet: Brad Pitt klär sig svenskt - "Brad Pitt wears JL", January 18, 2007
- Mall of Scandinavia: [1] - "J.Lindeberg Swedish fashion"
