(Filed Under wholesale Lingerie News). MRC Creations, in early February, took over the Frederick’s of Hollywood license that had been controlled by Naked Brand Group until the end of last year.

Naked merged with an electric car vehicle company at the end of 2021 and exited the lingerie business as part of that deal.

MRC’s Charles Ma, in an interview with BODY, said the firm was still in the early stages of deciding how it will potentially “relaunch” the brand.

Currently Frederick’s of Hollywood products are sold online at www.fredericks.com, a platform which had been controlled by Naked. According to Ma, the website will be operated by Nogin going forward. In a recent press release, Nogin described itself as expert in the “complex online retail environment,” allowing brands “to compete with big retail and take them to their next ecommerce frontier.” It claimed it “has partnered with brand powerhouses such as Bebe, Honeywell, Hurley, Lululemon, True Religion, Yeezy,” in the past.

Authentic Brands Group (ABG), acquired Frederick’s of Hollywood in mid-2015, and Bendon, the predecessor company to Naked, took over the license at that time.

Founded in 1947, Frederick’s, had a varying number of shops over the years (135 as of February, 2008), and was famous for its racy print catalog. It suffered through two bankruptcies (2001 and 2015) and ended up closing all the stores before it was acquired by ABG.

When ABG took over Frederick’s it announced new possibilities for the label. In a press release it proclaimed: “ABG’s strategic focus for Frederick’s of Hollywood will be to launch a new brand vision, expand product categories and drive distribution across department stores and specialty retailers in key markets including North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Latin America. The product design aesthetic will be led by intimate apparel, which will set the tone for other tent pole categories, including beauty, fragrance and personal care.”

That vision was not realized. Frederick’s was mainly offered as an online lingerie brand on the Naked controlled website.

Ma told BODY that the future for Frederick’s could include wholesaling to stores and other possibilities, but added that detailed plans of any kind, will come only after consultation with ABG.

It is known that ABG, apparently unhappy with Naked, had been seeking new licensing arrangements, with various wholesalers, for some time.

And ABG, when it renewed its license with Naked in 2020, significantly restricted its use of the Frederick’s of Hollywood label. As filed with the SEC, the 2020 agreement “amends and restates in its entirety” the original license agreement, and restricted the usage by Naked to “the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, through the Frederick’s of Hollywood website and through retail channels owned and/or operated by FOH and its affiliates, including the company’s other wholly owned subsidiary, Bendon Limited.” Bendon operated about 60 shops and outlets in Australia and New Zealand at the time.

Ma explained that MRC is a “family business,” based in Los Angeles, with some 30 years of experience in producing a variety of lingerie. He added that it typically produces in China. — NM

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Published 02-10-2022 by Nick Monjo