The period underwear brand Knix may not have won a basketball championship this month, like the other Knicks, but it is having a very good year.
The 13-year-old company has surpassed $1 billion in DTC sales to date and is seeing a 90% year-over-year increase in wholesale sales in North America. Now, the company is pushing further into wholesale by launching KT by Knix, a children’s sub-brand with teen and pre-teen size clothes, in over 350 Target stores across the U.S.
It’s the first nationwide wholesale deal Knix has struck and the largest to date. Previously, the brand has sold in Bloomingdale’s and Revolve in the U.S., along with Holt Renfrew and Sporting Life in its native Canada.
The partnership includes exclusive products, like a two-pack of bikinis in Target-exclusive colors. A marketing campaign slated to launch later this month.
Nicole Tapscott, Knix’s chief commercial officer, told Glossy that the brand is in growth mode. More wholesale partnerships are coming, including one with Free People later this year.
“We’re evolving from a digital disruptor to an omnichannel retailer,” Tapscott said. “In the last few years, like many brands, we saw massive growth between 2015 and 2022 that was all e-commerce-based. But the idea is to meet customers where they are, and right now, post-Covid, they are shopping in-store and in retailers like Target.”
As customer acquisition costs increase, Knix hopes retailers like Target can help build the brand and introduce it to a new generation of customers. Target’s popularity with parents and pre-teens makes it a natural fit for the youth-oriented KT by Knix.
Tapscott contrasted the Target assortment, which focuses on items like swimwear and back-to-school clothes, with the products it sells at Bloomingdale’s, which tend to be more adult-focused and span more categories, like apparel and sleep.
“We always start with the customer and where they’re at,” Tapscott said. “Target is really interested in the parents who are shopping with or for their children. They’ve put a lot of effort into developing Gen Z and Gen Alpha relationships. That’s a category we’re interested in, as well, so it was an obvious choice.”
Knix has been majority-owned by the Swedish multinational Essity, which acquired 80% of the company in 2022 for $320 million. Knix’s revenue is now over $150 million annually.
There has been a steady shift back toward wholesale among fashion brands in recent years. In April, sales at U.S. wholesale retailers had their biggest increase in over a year. Data from the online wholesale marketplace Joor found that wholesale now accounts for nearly 60% of the fashion industry’s revenue, as of the beginning of this year.
Tapscott said direct channels like Knix’s online store and its 20 owned stores across Canada and the U.S. are still important. But the smart move now, she said, is for brands to integrate wholesale and DTC in a holistic way.
“You need both, honestly,” she said. “You still want storytelling through communities, through Instagram or TikTok. But at the end of the day, the customer wants to transact, especially for a brand they haven’t bought before, at a retailer they already know and trust.”
