Madewell News: How It's Doing & Alexa Chung

Over at Lucky (click here), there is a video of Alexa Chung (at the launch of her line for Madewell during Fashion Week) being interviewed. She is asked several questions, including what is her inspiration & what kind of girl would buy her clothes.

On a related note... J.Crew's CEO Mickey Drexler had a lot to report about Madewell's performance during the last quarter & last fiscal year. Some highlights from the StreetInsider article (click here for its entirety) include the following:

• ...approximately $13 million in losses associated with Madewell, which includes expenses for our e-commerce launch and is essentially flat to 2009, excluding one-time costs related to store closures and impairment charges...
  
• ...We look at the penetration of the J.Crew brand, and Madewell has a potential, and I didn't mention anything about Madewell, because until we see it start to contribute earnings. It's not going to be on top of our we're so excited list. But in the meantime the indication is good. ...
  
• ...Well, we've had an interesting experience with Madewell and we've been kind of very cautious, which again I'm glad to say. We are seeing now every indication that our people like it a lot, customers like it a lot day-by-day. We are going online this summer, and we're pretty pleased about what that looks like. Again, we have a conservative sales plan, but we are - we're actually going to be looking at more stores for 2011, we're going to be a bit more ambitious about that than we've been. But it's - we've seen a lot more consistency in our performance there over the last six months, I'm really happy to say. If you go into our stores today, I think you'll see an assortment that's much more reflective of - starting a new company is really complicated. It's not an exercise that I would recommend to most, although some of us have been there successfully and not successfully, I think, so we're actually committed. We hired Alexa Chung, who - Alexa's been pretty unknown, but for us a muse of sorts for the Madewell brand. So, I think we're really - I don't want to be too optimistic, but we're spending a lot of time in the stores. We're looking at the customers, we're getting a lot of buzz and if you ask frankly a lot of women you know who shop in Madewell, you're going to see a lot more loyalty, higher traffic, a better conversion and price points. And we're becoming quite famous for our boots, our denim, our accessories, our scarves and it's actually nice to see. So I guess more to come in the next three months in terms of reporting. ...
  

It's interesting that Madewell is still under-performing expectations. If I am not mistaken, Madewell has lost money every year since its been under J.Crew's umbrella. I also heard too many times to count now how Madewell was going online (with a fully functioning e-commerce site), to only postpone it. I understand that Madewell is Mickey's baby, and he will do what he can to make it successful like J.Crew. However, I wonder how long investors will continue to support the Madewell brand if it continues to lose money.

Are you a fan of the "Alexa Chung for Madewell" Collection? Did you like (or dislike) her responses in the video? Also, what are your thoughts on Madewell's future? :)