Delia's, Inc. (stylized as dELiA*s) is a

lifestyle brand A lifestyle brand is a brand that attempts to embody the values, aspirations, interests, attitudes, or opinions of a group or a culture for marketing purposes.page 16 Lifestyle brands seek to inspire, guide, and motivate people, with the goal o ...

of apparel & accessories, primarily targeting girls and young women. From its founding in 1993 through the early 2010s, Delia's was an independent retailer and

direct marketer Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as ''direct response marketing''. By ...

, and in its prime was the leading marketer to 10 to 24-year-old females in the United States, with labels for preteen girls (#deliasgirls) 7-13 and girls between the ages of 13 to 19. Delia's was popular among college women, as many of its products were affordable and suitable for college-age students. It currently operates under license as a sub-brand of online retailer Dolls Kill.

Products

Delia's sells

apparel Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natura ...

(including pants, shorts, skirts, tees, jackets, blazers, and bikini tops and bottoms), accessories, footwear (including shoes and boots),

cosmetics Cosmetics are constituted mixtures of chemical compounds derived from either natural sources, or synthetically created ones. Cosmetics have various purposes. Those designed for personal care and skin care can be used to cleanse or protec ...

, and room furnishings. The brand previously sold to teenage consumers through direct mail catalogs, websites, and, for Delia's, mall-based specialty retail stores. As of 2020, Delia's products are only for sale through its parent label, Dolls Kill.

History

The company was launched in 1993 by two

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

graduates. One company focus was its Gen Y understanding, as reflected in its use of the internet for furthering brand identity.Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People – Marc Gobe
/ref> The company was acquired by Alloy Inc. in 2003, for $50 million.New Girl Order: Youth, Gender, and Generation in Contemporary Teen Girls' Media – Caryn E. Murphy
/ref> The combined company had annual catalog, internet, and retail sales of $300 million. It also had a database of over 20 million names, constituting 30%–40% of U.S. consumers who were 12–18 years old. Alloy then spun off the company in 2005. In January 2013 HRSH Acquisitions LLC bought Alloy Inc, now being marketed as Alloy Apparel, for $3.7 million in cash. HRSH also assumed $3.1 million in liabilities. On December 5, 2014, it announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, and would be liquidating all 95 stores. Shortly after, its shares fell more than 80% to $0.02. Steve Russo of Fab/Starpoint acquired the brand for $2.5 million, and in August 2015, re-opened the store with an online-only presence, but this was unsuccessful. Online fashion company Dolls Kill later licensed the Delia's name and re-launched it as a sub-brand in November 2018, with its clothes available online and through pop-ups in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Subsidiaries

In December 1997, Delia's acquired Gurl.com. It later sponsored a free e-mail and web hosting service, known as Gurlmail and Gurlpages respectively, owned by Lycos. Beginning in May 1998, Gurl.com began to offer merchandise from Delia's catalogue. In 1999, Delia's opened iTurf as an online subsidiary, including Gurl.com and its associated web addresses as properties under iTurf, in an attempt to build teen-centered websites marketed towards Generation Y. During its

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

in 1999, shares were priced up to $66 each. iTurf's websites had 35 million page views in February 1999 and $2.1 million in sales for the quarter ending on January 31, 1999. In the same fiscal year, they had earnings of $425,000 on sales of $4 million. Following the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

burst in 2000, iTurf reported nearly $16 million in losses within the first six months of the same year and had their stock value drop to $1. Delia's sold or closed all their Internet properties with the exception of Gurl.com, which was later sold to Primedia in May 2001 for an undisclosed amount.

References

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External links

Delia's official site
Retail companies established in 1993 1993 establishments in New York City Clothing brands of the United States Online clothing retailers of the United States Shops in New York City Companies based in New York City Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2014