Tag: retail

Categories
General / Musings

What You Need to Know About the Proposed New York State Legislature’s Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act

By Alan Behr

Alan Behr published a New York Law Journal article on the proposed New York State Legislature’s Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act, a bill that stands to have a major impact on fashion companies operating in New York state as well as show hints of what may arise elsewhere.

The bill, if signed into law in its current form, would add a new §399-mm to the State’s General Business Law to require that any fashion company with more than $100 million in “annual worldwide gross receipts” disclose on its website “its environmental and social due diligence policies, processes and outcomes, including significant real or potential adverse environmental and social impacts and disclosure targets for prevention and improvement.”  

The effect is something like an accountability value added tax, passing disclosure and remediation along the supply chain as goods mature from “raw material to final production.” A compliant company would have to address not merely the environmental impact issues implicit in the name of the bill but information on workforce wages of suppliers and the disclosing company’s “approach for incentivizing supplier performance on workers’ rights…”

The penalty for noncompliance would be a fine of up to two percent of annual global revenues of $450 million dollars or more—not mere profits but revenues, and not simply revenues in New York but total worldwide revenues, regardless of profitability. The New York State attorney general would be charged with enforcement, but private citizens could also start lawsuits. Fines paid would go to a new “community benefit fund” administered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and would be used for “environmental benefit projects that directly and verifiably benefit environmental justice communities.

The intentions of the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act are clearly noble, but it is hard to read the text of the current bill without seeing it as a high-minded legislative scold.  Read the full article for some key points.

. 

Categories
Accessories Business Law Intellectual Property Menswear Womenswear

Retailing with Foam and A Good Swing

Photograph Copyright © 2019 by Alan Behr

Two cappuccinos worthy of a caffè in Milano started my last visit, with a fashionable friend, to the Brooks Brothers store on Madison Avenue, here in New York. The chain’s mother ship had recently opened a bright and hospitable Red Fleece Café, and so my friend and I met right on the ground floor, within handshake distance of displays of shirts and ties, had a refreshment and then, coupons in hand, went shopping, women’s first, men’s second. On our way, we passed a golf simulator, where a pro patiently guided a customer on improving his swing—with a real club toward a virtual green. Retailers have always offered something besides what are now universally called “items.” From lunch counters to hairdressing and beyond, stores have been attracting generations of visitors with more than just merchandise.

What has changed, however, is both the breadth and the layered complexity of it all. Even the décor matters as it never has before. The luminescent, open-plan renovation of the Saks Fifth Avenue store is a veritable invitation to come on in and have a look. As for services: soon after our visit to Brooks Brothers, this note arrived by email: “Your trousers are ready… We can pull nice coordinating pieces for you.” Personal shopping used to be a benefit given to the best customers of a retailer, but with physical (“bricks-and-mortar”) retailing challenged so completely now by online competition, all shopping has become personal, and stores must engage and entertain customers as they never have done before.

When a business expands, however tangentially and however much in pursuit of the raison d’ê·tre for a store—selling goods—the store should be aware of the likely importance of protecting its brand for the other activities. That means reexamining the retailer’s portfolio of registered trademarks. There should already be a registration for retail store services and there is likely one for online sales, but if a café or coffee bar has just been added, the next application should be for restaurant services (if not already there as a legacy from the days when even modest-sized retailers had soda fountains). But that virtual driving range? Entertainment services. I was recently invited to a delightful event at Saks, hosted by Switzerland Tourism. Two of my favorite things converged within a roped-off area of the sales floor: great retailing and Swiss chocolate. From a trademark point of view, however, that would be providing catering services and event location services. And so on.

Insurance policies need to be examined to be sure that the new range of activities is covered. The cappuccino is foaming, the Champagne is popping and the golf clubs are swinging—check with your carrier to be sure your coverage is current and sufficiently comprehensive.

Finally, be sure your employment policies are up to date. A dress code that applies to salesmen in men’s suits doesn’t necessarily apply to a golf pro, after all, to say nothing of a barista.

Credit: Alan Behr

See posts: “Brooks Brothers at 200“

Categories
Business Law Intellectual Property

Brooks Brothers at 200 – Part 3: Lessons

Earlier in this series of posts (here and here), I reported on my interview with Arthur Wayne, the vice president, global public relations of Brooks Brothers. We discussed how the brand maintains continuity throughout hundreds of points of sale (wholesale and retail). In business and legal terms, here is the short and simple version:

  1. Stylistic consistency creates trademark consistency. Brooks Brothers maintains uniformity of cut, pattern, SKUs and style names worldwide. I own suits and jackets in the 1818 line, which is the company’s standard, positioned between its premium Gold Fleece line and Red Fleece bridge line. My pieces are of Italian fabric, sewn, variously, in Italy, Thailand and the company-owned workrooms in Haverhill, Massachusetts. All bear the trademark 1818, all are in the slimmest of the company’s fits, which is branded Milano. As a customer, I know that, wherever I find Brooks Brothers in the world, I can put on an 1818 Milano jacket made in any of three continents and know it will fit just as do the ones in my suitcase. In legal terms: The more consistent the message, generally speaking, and the more clearly a trademark represents just one source of origin, the stronger will be that trademark.
  2. Control the message, but respect regional differences. Japanese customers much prefer the company’s products made in its US factories—which they view as a mark of authenticity. French customers, in contrast, want to experience the brand, but they care relatively little where items they buy are sourced. (Interestingly, offered Mr. Wayne in an aside, when foreign buyers visit, it is the Japanese men who typically have the best interpretation of “American traditional style.”) United States trademark law does not permit the registration of geographically descriptive marks, so from a legal point of view, where it is made is of no matter: if customers get that the brand is about the American experience (reinterpreted and, to my taste, noticeably improved, by Italian ownership), that is what matters most.
  3. As in the movies, story is everything to a brand. Marketers and lawyers do not always see eye-to-eye. Every business day, in multiple places around the world, marketing teams are presenting to their lawyers exciting new trademarks, only to hear the lawyers say that they are unavailable for use. On the importance of story for a fashion or luxury brand, however, there should be no disagreement. Just as the mere mention of Veuve Cliquot brings to mind the story of the taste and luxury of Champagne and the mention of Leica brings to mind the story of precise German optics, so does a reference to Brooks Brothers open a page on a story about the American experience—in style of dress and in style of living. When Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” he omitted any reference to wise consistency. That is the path taken by Brooks Brothers and by other international brands that know that, from consistency comes the strength to endure and prosper in multiple territories, among multiple customer bases.
  4. Newness is the best tradition. “People think of us as a traditional brand,” said Mr. Wayne, “but our founder, Henry Sands Brooks, was a fashion guy—a dandy. Look at what followed: collars with buttons; readymade suits; pink shirts on men. All of these things were innovative in their time—probably even shocking to many.” Tradition, in other words, is what happens when innovation meets inheritable acceptance. And that is the best way a marketer, together with his or her lawyer, can build, expand and ultimately preserve a fashion brand.

Credit:  Alan Behr

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Video: Brooks Brothers | Made in America: Makers and Merchants

Categories
Cases Intellectual Property

What’s In A Letter?

Recently, the New Balance footwear company won a landmark $1.5 million trademark decision in the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court, near Shanghai, China. Daniel McKinnon, the New Balance senior counsel for intellectual property, told the New York Times: “If the China marketplace can be thought of as a schoolyard, New Balance wants to make it abundantly clear we are the wrong kid to pick on.”

The schoolyard brawl all started when New Balance alleged that three Chinese brands infringed upon its well-known New Balance “N” trademark. The three Chinese shoemakers, New Boom, New Barlun, and New Bunren, saw fit not only to use similar brand names, but also to trade off of New Balance’s international acclaim by mimicking its slanted “N” design on their shoes. A Suzhou Court cited the defendants’ free-riding, consumer confusion, and market harm as the basis for its ruling in favor of New Balance.

What makes this case important is not only that New Balance was prepared to fight for its rights in China—often a challenging thing to do—but also that it was willing to do so over a single-letter trademark.

A trademark is a source indicator that can convey a range of messages about your brand such as quality, price, taste and reputation—the sometimes obvious and sometimes mysterious factors that, in total, are the goodwill of the brand.
Brand owners often reflect upon the value and protectability of words, names, logotypes, slogans and even colors as trademarks. The victory by New Balance in a famously tough territory tells us that a lot can ride on who is found to own and have the rights to exploit a single letter.

Minimalism is as much a factor in trademark recognition as anywhere else in the broad field of visual expression. Mercedes Benz has made a simple three-pointed star one of the most recognizable marks on earth. In the USA, Louboutin owns the color red for the soles of shoes, and Federal Express owns the truncated version of its mark popularized by the public: FedEx. Take it down even further, and you get marks with one or two letters: PayPal is recognized by two cerulean stylized “P’s” and Facebook by a solitary but consequential byzantine blue lower-case “f”. Uber upgraded its former “U” mark to a modernized “U” enclosed by emerald green.

In fashion, designers have been using single-letter marks for decades. Hermès uses its elegant “H”; and of course, New Balance is using its slanted “N”. A few logos have doubled letters: Gucci has made the twin “G” into a brand; as with the seemingly reflective Tory Burch “T”, the mirrored Fendi “F”, and the interlocking “Cs” of Chanel.

Single-letter marks can be significant in fashion because a single letter can serve not only as a logo, but also as a design that can be emblazoned on clothing, handbags, shoes, etc. Meanwhile, the boom in online retail—where a mark may be only barely visible—has been the basis for the further simplification of marks. The large British online retailer Asos recently abbreviated its trademark to the letter “a,” the better to identify the brand on its mobile app.

 

Credit: Candace R. Arrington

Candace Arrington provides research support as a law clerk to our corporate and business law, intellectual property law and entertainment law practices.

Categories
Business Law Real Estate

Checkpoint On the World’s Most Expensive Retail Street

Trump Tower

When Presidential Security Interferes with Revenue
and the Customer Service Experience

In the words of a troupe of Britons, first heard long ago, “And now for something completely different.” This post is a transatlantic collaboration, co-authored by members of the fashion and real estate law practices of Phillips Nizer LLP, of New York City, and Fox Williams LLP, of London. The firms address the same legal question from the perspective of New York law, in the segment authored by the Phillips Nizer, and English law, in the segment authored by Fox Williams.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The secondary residence of U.S. President Donald Trump is located in the eponymous skyscraper that bears his name located in an area of Upper Fifth Avenue in New York City, at the apex of the most important and most expensive shopping district in the Western Hemisphere. Prized retail space can be found in the building and in surrounding properties. This is not the typical environment for establishing a security cordon for the protection of the President of the United States.

If President Trump continues to maintain Trump Tower as a secondary residence and working office (as he had done while President-elect), we can surmise that protective and preventative measures that have been in effect for weeks, will continue. Anyone brave enough to attempt to enter the still-cocooned retail spaces will receive a quick course in world-class security. You have to talk your way past federal and local law enforcement officers to get into Gucci, which is in Trump Tower but accessible by the street, to say nothing of what you need to do to get into the building’s atrium for the chance to score a latte at Starbucks. In short, the conversion of Trump Tower into “White House North” has not been good for business for any tenant who is not named Trump.

New York City and State Law

The retail tenants may seek ways to mitigate their losses. The law and most leases, however, are not particularly sympathetic to this type of economic collateral damage, which typically falls under the category of “consequential damages.”

As a general rule, a tenant’s choice of remedies when things go wrong in a lease is to seek an abatement of rent, or to seek to cancel the lease. Lost profits are considered speculative by the courts and are almost never awarded in cases involving commercial leases. Most commercial leases have specific prohibitions against the award of lost profits.

One possible alternate claim would be for what is known as “constructive eviction.” That happens whenever something within a landlord’s control substantially interferes with the use and enjoyment of the leased premises. The catch here is that it has to be something the landlord does or fails to do; in the case of the President, however, the security is not his own but that of the United States government, working closely with the New York City Police Department.

Many leases provide that, if access to the premises is thwarted or impeded by fire or other damage, rent will be abated. For those leases, there could be support for the claim that the extraordinary event of government restraint on access forms the basis for an abatement of rent.

New York courts have held that a party may be relieved from its duty to perform whenever an unforeseen event has occurred that destroys the underlying reasons for performing the contract. The argument that the United States Secret Service and the local police have turned your block into the Maginot Line is not a familiar one, but it could, at least in theory, gain traction if damage is shown to be acute enough.

Finally, there is always a claim against the government—but that is probably pushing it a bit. Whenever property is taken from a private individual by the government under “eminent domain,” there must be payment of just compensation. There is an exception to the rule that provides that there is no compensation when a taking is due to the exercise of “police power.” An example of police power is the right to damage or destroy private property (without compensation to the owner) when such an act is necessary to protect the public interest. If you want to know what that means, watch the next time someone parks an expensive car in front of a fire hydrant when a blaze has started and fire fighters arrive with their axes.

In short, there is no clear way, through the use of litigation, for retailers caught within the security cordon or even just outside it to seek redress. However, the President is nothing if not a deal maker, and as a sage old lawyer once suggested, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” It cannot hurt to contact the landlord and practice your take on “the art of the deal.”

English Law

The position under English law has differing aspects (and certainly uses a different legal language) but is similar. It is true that this could be an issue that is unique to the circumstances in which these retail tenants find themselves, but it raises issues pertinent to landlords and tenants in both jurisdictions. One can easily envisage similar circumstances in London, for example, affecting footfall to tenants’ retail stores and outlets, be that at the instigation of the state, or from other sources. What if a prominent politician or other VIP took offices in Regent Street or Bond Street? What if state security demanded establishing a similar cordon for some other reason, one that interfered with the tenants of prime retail space in the capital?

In English law, the concept of a tenant (as opposed to a landlord) seeking to “cancel” or “determine” a lease is almost unheard of without the agreement of the landlord (for example, a surrender or a break clause). Whilst English contract law has well-established principles of breach of a contract leading to its termination, this does not translate well to the realm of landlord and tenant law, where a tenant is seeking to terminate the lease (this is not the case with the landlord, who can usually seek to forfeit the lease in the event of a tenant’s breach).

So, with this avenue all but closed to tenants, they would usually need to focus on the terms of the lease itself to seek damages or a court order that the interference must stop.

Like our U.S. colleagues, English lawyers would express doubt as to whether the concept of rent abatement can apply to these facts. For the reasons given above, where an English lease contains a rent abatement – or “rent cesser” – clause, that clause normally relates to circumstances in which the property in question is damaged or destroyed (usually due to circumstances for which the landlord is insured) only to the extent that it is uninhabitable. If that is the case, the rent will not be payable whilst the property cannot be occupied. It might be stretching matters too far (without specific wording in the lease) to extend this well-established concept to fit these facts. Trump Tower (or the hypothetical English equivalent) is not a property that is damaged; it is the access to it that has been compromised.

If this offers little comfort to tenants, there are two further (and largely overlapping) English law concepts that might assist. English law has long recognized that landlords must not “derogate from their grant” and the obligation to allow the tenant “quiet enjoyment” of the property. If proved, they entitle a tenant to sue the landlord for damages.

The former principle states that, in granting the lease, the landlord has agreed to confer certain benefits on a tenant, and should not do anything that substantially deprives the tenant of those benefits. The latter requires the landlord to ensure that there is no interference with the tenant’s possession and enjoyment of the property itself.

English cases on the above where tenants have succeeded, have included erecting advertising billboards obscuring the tenant’s premises, alterations by a landlord that discourage passers-by, and causing noise and disruption by way of building works adjacent to the tenant’s property.

So, it would appear that English tenants might be better placed in these circumstances than their U.S. counterparts. However, as in America, tenants are likely to run into the same problem they would encounter had they set up shop on Fifth Avenue instead of Regent Street: is the presence of such high security something instigated (or even sanctioned) by the landlord, or is it a matter of national security, out of the hands of whatever corporate vehicle happens to own the freehold of a given retail unit? The unfortunate truth is likely to be that the security presence is not the ‘fault’ of the landlord, and thus, the landlord cannot be said to have violated either legal principle.

Tenants may therefore find themselves, as in America, caught between a rock and a hard place: a landlord who is ‘not at fault’ and a rent abatement clause that does not do enough to protect their interests. Perhaps one for English tenants’ lawyers to think about too when drafting leases of high-end retail and fashion outlets in the busiest and most desirable of the U.K.’s shopping districts.

Credits: Steven J. Rabinowitz

Steve is counsel in Phillips Nizer’s Real Estate Law practice.

Elizabeth “Liz” Ruff, partner, and Tom Morton, associate at Fox Williams LLP, Solicitors (U.K.)

At Fox Williams, Liz advises on a broad range of commercial property transactions, both freehold and leasehold, including property management, investment acquisitions and disposals, secured lending, property finance, general landlord and tenant issues. Tom is a property litigator, and heads up the firm’s Real Estate dispute resolution practice.

Visit the Fox Williams Fashion Law Group website at www.fashionlaw.co.uk.

Phillips Nizer would like to thank Liz and Tom for providing a non-U.S. perspective on this very interesting, and in this instance, extremely unique and unusual circumstance in real estate law affecting the landlord-tenant relationship.

Categories
Accessories Business Law Footwear General / Musings Menswear Womenswear

In the Fitting Room with the Thieves

Shopping with Big Sunglasses Woman Keeping a Secret

Whether you call it shoplifting or shrinkage and the people tasked with stopping it the house detectives or the asset protection department, and regardless of what new technology you put into place, if you are a retailer, stealing is a problem that will never go away. When I was in high school, back in New Orleans, I worked weekends and summers at the department store my family owned and operated (and long since shuttered). I got to see firsthand the extent of the problem—which was harder to track in those days before electronic inventory controls. The manager of my department was arrested for stealing a pair of Mickey Mouse suspenders from the warehouse. He had been collared by the four-man security team brought in to replace the aging and quite ineffective store detective. During a big three-day sale taking place over a long summer weekend, as the junior and surely least valuable member of our sales team, I was relegated to sitting in the men’s fitting room, watching for thieves. All I got for my trouble was the chance to alert security to the customer who thought that the fitting room stall belonged in the men’s bathroom and had used it accordingly. That incentivized me to petition for repatriation to the sales floor and, just to be sure my position did not revert, I became the top sales person of my department during the next three-day sale.

Jump some years ahead, and now I find myself working with clients in retail on the law of asset protection. There was the time I had to work with the manager and assistant manager of one department store branch that was being sued for assault and false imprisonment by an alleged shoplifter who claimed he had been injured in his apprehension. The plaintiff appeared at the first hearing on crutches, and justice being as slow as it is, by the time the second hearing came around, he was practically pole vaulting with the things, which his lawyer, who could now hardly catch up with him, obviously told him to keep using in an effort to garner sympathy and a favorable settlement.

It was frustrating to our client, but none of that has changed much. You still need to be sure that you work with counsel to know what you can and cannot do in pursuing, approaching and ultimately challenging a suspected shoplifter. There are rules about that, and they vary from state to state. Just as an example, in New York you need to show that the suspect took possession of the item with an intention to make off with it. If you are found purposefully trying to sneak out a T-shirt by wearing it, give your lawyer a call; but if you tuck the T-shirt under your arm while paying for something else and mistakenly head out with it, you are guilty only of absentmindedness.

As long as retailers work very hard to create demand for what they sell, and as long as objects of desire hang and lie in public view, shoplifting will be a problem. As with all other problems that are certain to occur, it is always best to have policies and procedures in place and to make sure that the individuals charged with being the first line of defense—the sales staff—are thoroughly briefed on what to do. It is prudent to have counsel and the security team conduct periodic joint seminars with sales and security personnel. As with everything else in the law, the proverbial ounce of prevention will alleviate the need for the more than typically expensive, when it comes to litigation, pound of cure.

Credit: Alan Behr