Suss Design: one-of-a-kind

Bobbin,  Jan, 1999  by Julie McElwain

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From a start in knitting sweaters for the stars, Suss Design has established a successful niche in the market's upper echelons with its unique offerings in children's wear, women's wear, home furnishings and more.

"Opportunities," the advice columnist Ann Landers once wisely pointed out, "are usually disguised as hard work, so many people don't recognize them." That may be true for many people, but not for designer Suss Cousins, who not only recognizes a good opportunity when she sees one, but also isn't afraid to put some sweat and solid muscle behind her ideas.

The opportunity that Cousins seized upon more than a decade ago was creating exclusive, top quality sweaters under the brand name Suss Design. And, thanks to her strong work ethic, the Swedish-born designer has managed to carve out a distinctive niche in the sweater market, beginning in New York, NY, with her one-of-a-kind sweaters. "They were very expensive,:all hand-knitted by me, using a lot of cashmere and mohair." Cousins recalls. "I sketched the designs and [included] any scenes that [the clients] wanted ... so it was a long process before the end product."

The sweaters were unique enough to attract the attention of Bill Cosby, who began wearing her colorful styles on "The Cosby Show" in the late '80s. Says Cousins, "I did a lot of soap operas and celebrities ... but 'The Cosby Show' gave me a lot of exposure."

In 1991, Cousins and her husband (and business partner) Brian moved to Los Angeles, CA, and she began to revamp her operation from one of crafting custom knit creations into more of a traditional wholesale operation. "When I had my first daughter, I went from knitting adult sweaters to kids' sweaters," she explains, which evolved into a 10-piece children's wear line sold in a meager 20 stores.

In 1995, the company was given an adrenaline shot when Cousins incorporated the business, added a women's wear line and opened a 2,800-square-foot outlet on tony Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, just down the street from Todd Oldham's store. Originally, Cousins divvied up the space by devoting one-third to retail (selling both her children's wear and women's wear lines) and the remainder to the wholesale operation. Yet the company's 1997 success - the operation tripled in growth - prompted Cousins to purchase an adjacent building, knock down walls and remodel the 6,000-square-foot space. The expanded location is equally divided between Suss Design's retail operation, including adult and children's apparel as well as a yam section, and its wholesale operation.

The wholesale side of the firm's business has leap-frogged from serving several dozen boutiques to selling the lines to 300 upscale department and specialty stores, including Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, to name a few. The firm's sales also include accounts with a handful of specialty catalogs, and a tidy overseas retail clientele in countries as far away as Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Wholesale price points, which range from a lofty $129 to $189 for women's wear and $48 to $78 for children's wear, have kept Suss Design in retail's upper echelons. Yet the high price tag hasn't deterred buyers from stocking their stores with the goods. In large part, this is because retailers are hungry for distinctive merchandise, notes Peter Jacobson, owner of Creative Concepts, a bicoastal (Los Angeles and New York) multiline showroom.

"Suss [Cousins] has a special sensibility," says Jacobson, who has been representing Suss Design's women's wear line for nearly two years. "The color and balance in her designs are exceptional, and she offers a wonderful, whimsical style. ... Buyers love her uniqueness and the feeling that [the sweaters] are not mass produced."

Maintaining a Hand-Crafted Appeal

Cousins is adamant about maintaining both the handcrafted appeal and the exclusivity of her merchandise. To that end, the designer remains the creative force behind every motif, style and silhouette. She also works with yam mills to create unusual yarns, such as rayon chenille, crimped and textured yams and her own rayon blended yarn that she patented six years ago. "If you pick up whatever yam is on the market, then someone else is going to have it," she points out. Still, Cousins is pulling back from actually developing yams from raw fibers, and instead wants to use "what yarn mills have already produced...adding whatever I want into it to make it special."

Suss Design works exclusively with dye houses to get the right colors. The company dyes its chenille in North Carolina, and sends its cotton yarns to a dye house in California. Cousins admits, however, that she wants to begin buying more pre-dyed yarns through a company in New York. "Our product is already handmade, so to have a whole procedure with the yarn before we even make the sweater is very time-consuming," she acknowledges.