The Foundation Of An American Dkny Brand
In 1984, Donna Karan founded our brand; DKNY, an American fashion agency that focuses on advertising our apparel through websites, campaigns and other online shopping databases. We are known for our casual but also affordable clothing as well as our success in global networking. Our main headquarters is based in NYC but we have other outlets expanding worldwide. Our top 3 attributes, we focus on promoting through our website are Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility. Our mission statement expresses that our main goal is to promote accessibility through technology. We want people to have easy access to our website through smartphones, laptops, tablets and other technology devices. We primarily focus on this because it gives us the opportunity to compete with other brands nationally.
In 2016, Louis Vuitton (LVMH) sold DKNY off to a French luxury client known as the G-III Apparel Group for $650 million. Since then, our top two competitors are Ann incorporation and Giorgio Armani. Our business advantage that led our brand to become so successful is our men and women’s lifestyle collections as well as our accessories department. In terms of finances, we have our main licensing revenue PVH as well as Estee Lauder, Hanesbrands, and Fossil. As the development of our net sales doubled in the quarter for both DKNY and Donna Karan we hope that our revenue will improve because it is a very important aspect for our business in the future.
DKNY has never experienced any copyright issues until approximately a month ago. Our PR team was recently accused of using photographer, Brandon Stanton’s photos without consent. Stanton is known for his project “Humans of New York,” in which he had a goal to capture 10,000 New Yorkers in action on the street. Originally we offered to pay Stanton $15,000 for 300 of his photos to hang in our store windows globally. However, Stanton did not agree because he anticipated more money from us, however someone in our company ignored his refusal and hung one of Stanton’s photographs in a DKNY store in Bangkok, Thailand.
The news spread to Stanton through a fan that saw his work in our store located in Thailand and sent it to Stanton. He then went to social media and posted on his Facebook page about the incident asking us for a $100,000 donation to the YMCA in Bedford – Stuyvesant, Brooklyn rather than seeking revenge. Stanton’s post reached thousands of likes and comments, putting us in a humiliating setting with the public. This put us in an uncomfortable position and is a huge concern for our PR team. We responded to Stanton’s post stating, “$25k will help a lot of kids at the YMCA. I know a lot of you would like to have seen the full $100k, but we are going to take them at their word that it was a mistake and be happy that this one had a happy ending. Thanks so much for your support, everyone.” Stanton was upset because he wanted what he asked for, but we felt it was just a miscommunication on both ends.
Our PR team eventually responded to Stanton’s request but we offered to donate $25,000 of the $100,000 to the YMCA. This created more turmoil between Stanton and our business because although we responded to Stanton, he expected more money from the company with the understanding that he gave no consent for them to use his artwork. Another evadible issue is that our publics said in Thailand we used some mock photos of Stanton’s work without the intentions of doing so for a Spring project but apologized for our mistake.
