Jones CEO Wes Card (
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A new worry has emerged for cash-strapped shoppers: higher clothing prices.
That’s right, on top of a shaky job market, high unemployment and little wage growth, consumers may soon be forced to dig deeper when clothes shopping.
The bad news bombshell was dropped yesterday by Jones Group — the New York-based apparel company that makes department-store staples like Nine West and Anne Klein — which warned that the rising cost of manufacturing, shipping and raw materials, like cotton, is squeezing margins, and that retailers will likely be forced to raise prices to shore up profits.
The news hammered Jones Group shares — which fell by 22 percent — as well as shares of other clothing makers and retail chains as investors fretted that wallet-conscious consumers, who already face soaring food prices, may balk at higher markups on fashions.
“We’ve seen more than 15 consecutive years of price deflation in the apparel industry,” according to Todd Slater, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets. “It looks like that party may be over.”
Jones, which also announced disappointing profits, won’t be the only company hurt, according to CEO Wes Card, who said rising costs, capacity shortages and product delays are an “industrywide phenomenon.”
That helped send the Standard & Poor’s Retail Index down by as much as 2 percent. Abercrombie & Fitch, Pacific Sunwear and VF Corp. each saw shares drop steeper than the general markets. Shares of Jones’ archrival Liz Claiborne plunged nearly 6 percent.
Some on Wall Street, like analyst Omar Saad of Credit Suisse, said Jones’ dismal results weren’t entirely the result of industry headwinds. Jones lacks the global reach that some competitors have, Saad noted.
The company’s middle-market fashions also may be more vulnerable to markdowns than more upscale brands like Coach, which reported better-than-expected earnings earlier this week.
And while cotton prices lately soared to their highest inflation-adjusted levels since the Civil War, most apparel executives don’t expect the problem to last more than a few months.
The bigger worry, however, is that the cost of manufacturing apparel in low-cost countries like China has run out of room to fall, according to Lazard’s Slater. While a recent jump in manufacturing costs is partly due to recession-idled capacity, Slater thinks increased labor demand overseas could help push apparel prices as much as 5 percent higher during the next few years.
Jones Group, which changed its name from Jones Apparel earlier this month, had third-quarter net income of $29.1 million, or 34 cents per share, down from $30.4 million, or 36 cents per share a year earlier.
Revenue rose 19.4 percent to $1.02 billion. jcovert@nypost.com