ABOUT US
‘I wanted to create a line that encompassed all the wishes and dreams of new parents: the softest, most natural materials to surround your baby, the highest quality design and construction, and most importantly, the hope of a cleaner kinder earth.’
- Kate McIntosh Quinn
ABOUT KATE QUINN
Kate Quinn was founded in 2006, and quickly found success among boutiques across the US and the globe. During our first dozen years, Kate Quinn was sold in hundreds of high-end boutiques, national department store chains and on dozens of online retailer sites.
During that time, Kate Quinn followed the typical approach of high-end fashion brands, which was to design and produce seasonal collections four times a year. Each season would be sampled, marketed, and sold through the typical wholesale channels that included tradeshows, sales reps, wholesale markups, and the production of expensive catalogs.
And while the brand gained a strong footing in brick and mortar retail in the US, Canada and around the world, the expense of marketing to this channel held the company back from its real purpose. Kate’s mission is to provide as many parents as possible an affordable luxury for their child. To make clothes with clean lines, saturated colors and modern styling that are sophisticated, fun, and affordable. Selling to other retailers meant that the Kate Quinn brand was priced the same as every other luxury brand, which limited its affordability and reach.
In 2018, Kate Quinn made the decision to abandon our wholesale business entirely, which at the time amounted to over 70% of our annual revenue. Instead, we dedicated our focus entirely to our online store: www.katequinn.com. With this shift, the limitations imposed by the wholesale channel were lifted, and Kate Quinn became much more affordable, accessible, and fun.
Now, Kate Quinn can:
* Price competitively, passing on the many savings realized by removing costs of wholesale markup, sales reps, tradeshows, and catalog production.
* Increase variety, by designing over 50 collections per year, instead of just four. Kate’s dream is to release a new collection every day.
Kate Quinn pricing shows today’s pricing compared to the prices of our clothes at a typical boutique that sold Kate Quinn or that sells similar items today. Before the shift to exclusively sell only on our website, our bodysuits were typically sold for $22 to $30 by our boutique retailers or ecommerce partners.
Today we can sell bodysuits on our website for $16 or less because we have taken out the additional costs of the wholesale channel and passed those savings on to our parents.
The move to focus online has given Kate Quinn room to deliver a vast array of prints and silhouettes at prices that every parent can afford.