Speidel hoping to turn clock back

TIME IS MONEY: Providence-based Speidel is emerging from a 2009 bankruptcy hoping to ride a resurgence in mid-1900s fashion. Above, company principals Gennaro and Lynn-Marie Cerce look at products in the firm’s Cranston facility. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
TIME IS MONEY: Providence-based Speidel is emerging from a 2009 bankruptcy hoping to ride a resurgence in mid-1900s fashion. Above, company principals Gennaro and Lynn-Marie Cerce look at products in the firm’s Cranston facility. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

The heyday of 109-year-old watch-and-watchband-brand Speidel was the skinny-tie era of the 1950s and 1960s, when the company employed hundreds in its Providence Jewelry District plant.
Now Gennaro and Lynn-Marie Cerce, the brother-and-sister team who bought Speidel out of bankruptcy in 2009, hope the “Mad Men”-inspired popularity of those midcentury fashions will fuel the brand’s resurgence.
“I think the Speidel brand is a vintage brand and the millennial generation wants a vintage look and feel, like on ‘Mad Men’ [the AMC series focused on the 1960s New York advertising world],” said Lynn-Marie Cerce, principal of Cerce Capital LLC, which owns Speidel. “We have added new products but kept our classic [lines]. It’s like Levi’s and Converse, those timeless brands are always getting good play.”
From the months in receivership in 2009, when the company stopped shipping orders and laid off its entire workforce, the Cerces are building the brand back piece by piece.
After buying the Speidel name, they reacquired an identification-bracelet segment, with both medical and engraved jewelry bracelets, that had been sold off preceding the bankruptcy.
In 2011, they added a line of watches to go along with the brand’s signature bands.
Now they are expanding from watches and bands further into fashion accessories and men’s jewelry, such as bracelets, cuff links and money clips.
Last year Speidel built a new website that gives them, for the first time in the company’s history, an e-commerce portal allowing direct online sales.
“It was in total shambles when we bought it,” said Gennaro Cerce, also a Cerce Capital principal, about Speidel. “It had been shut down for three months and once we bought it we had to hire everyone back and get it up and running again. For the most part, that has meant we have had to be very tactical so far.” Cerce Capital bought Speidel out of receivership with a $1.65 million bid in August 2009.
Gennaro Cerce came to the watchband business from a distressed-debt investment background and was on the executive team that turned around Duro Textiles LLC in Fall River. Lynn-Marie Cerce had worked in consumer-products marketing for the Gillette division of Proctor & Gamble.
That combination figured to match well with the challenges at Speidel, which made its name designing and manufacturing watchbands, but in recent decades had been reduced to a distributor of products made in Asia.
The duo’s turnaround plan for Speidel starts with rekindling the brand’s name recognition and then growing it.
“We are one of the most recognizable watchband companies in the world,” Lynn-Marie Cerce said. “We would like to use Speidel as a platform, an iconic brand that can extend into men’s jewelry.”
The Cerces wouldn’t discuss current sales figures, but hope to double orders in 2013.
To do that, they will likely need to expand the company’s demographic appeal, which is now based almost entirely of people 45 years old and older.
Lynn-Marie Cerce said she isn’t worried that younger generations raised with time-keeping, mobile phones will abandon wrist watches, which still show up consistently in the fashion magazines.
And the Cerces think the affordability of Speidel watches and bands will keep them popular with retailers looking for products in a price point that can drive foot traffic.
“We are an opening price point to jewelers – nothing is [more than] $120,” said Gennaro Cerce. “You get a good-looking, fashionable watch with a two-year warranty. They have only a certain amount of people looking at Rolexes, so they want something fun and [for use] every day.”
While Speidel’s signature bands – like the Twist-O-Flex – and watches are still made by venders overseas, the Cerces do use a manufacturer in Lincoln to make their ID bracelets. And although it isn’t expected anytime soon, they hope to bring more production back to the United States over time.
As part of its new marketing push, Speidel has launched a program to donate a portion of all sales to Operation Homefront, a charity for veterans, and 5,000 watchbands to the Soldier’s Angels charity.
Even with the Cerces’ experience in corporate turnarounds, Speidel faces many obstacles to regain a semblance of its former prominence in the still-shrinking American jewelry industry.
Despite the success of Rhode Island companies like Alex and Ani, Ocean State employment in the jewelry industry has dropped for each of the last seven years.
In 2011, there were 4,200 people employed in the sector, down from 6,900 in 2006, according to statistics from the R.I. Department of Labor and Training. Through the first 11 months of last year, the monthly average number of workers was 4,050.
Speidel currently employs 15 people at its Cranston headquarters and plans to hire at least two more full-time workers in 2013.
Dione Kenyon, president of the Jewelers Board of Trade, a trade group based in Warwick, said the Cerces are an example of some of the younger management teams moving into the industry and fit with other Rhode Island companies focused on fashion jewelry instead of fine jewelry.
For jewelry brands in 2013, access to capital remains the top challenge and is contributing to the continued consolidation and deleveraging of producers.
“People are still having to rely on their own personal or private capital,” Kenyon said. “We have seen more consolidation in suppliers being purchased by larger companies, but that concentration means that for the survivors it will get better.” •

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