Madras makers | “We're selling a lifestyle, a preppie lifestyle.”
Photo/Courtesy Cape Madras
Retro fit: Jenna Sisselman founded Cape Madras in 2003 because she missed the 1960s preppie look. Now, Madras is back in vogue and the company is netting millions.
Jenna Sisselman was looking for a job to keep her busy while her two young sons were in school, so in 2003 she started a business out of her Cape Elizabeth home selling summer clothing made from the checkered Madras cotton cloth the preppie set flaunted in the 1960s. “When we first started, we had this idea that it would be a small business,” Sisselman says. “We thought it’d be cool if we were in 50 or even 100 stores and do it part-time.”
It didn’t turn out that way. Today, Cape Madras, which Sisselman runs with her husband Brian, owns a textile factory in southern India that employs 40 people, sells its product in 40 states and just signed its 600th store — the pro shop at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., just outside Manhattan.
Building on its initial success, Cape Madras plans to move beyond Madras to carry linen, seersucker and twill clothing, as well as launch a line of home products, from Madras table cloths to pillow cases. The couple also is looking at opening a flagship store sometime in the future. But Sisselman is wary of the company growing too big, too fast. The question, she says, is, “How can we get better? Not, how can we get bigger?”
The idea for Cape Madras came to Sisselman after seeing photos of Madras-clad young men and women in her husband’s high school yearbook. She has always loved Madras and guessed, correctly as it turns out, that she wasn’t the only one frustrated that you couldn’t find quality Madras shorts and skirts anymore.
Despite her lack of experience in fashion, Sisselman says she knows what clothes she likes and has a good eye for color. (On a recent afternoon, she wears glasses with bright pink-rimmed designer frames and says her home has been described as “Dr. Seuss meets Willy Wonka.”) She took traditional Madras — a fabric born in India in the 19th century when local tailors copied the tartan patterns worn by Scottish soldiers — with its dark blues, reds and yellows, and added “bright” and “fruity” colors to liven it up. Her clothing line became popular with the summer-loving, country-club-vacation-crowd, she says. “When starting out I think it’s key to have a niche and know who your customer is,” Sisselman says. “We’re selling a lifestyle, a preppie lifestyle.”
After making up her mind to launch the business, she leveraged everything she could to get the it off the ground, even mortgaging her Cape Elizabeth home. “It was a huge leap of faith,” Sisselman says. “It was something I believed in, so we said, ‘Let’s just risk it all.’”
The risk paid off. In 2004, Cape Madras’ first selling year, roughly 100 stores carried its products and the company posted $250,000 in sales. Four years later, sales have grown to $3 million. Jenna and Brian won’t disclose how much money they take home, but Brian says they were able to pay off all their debt and that their profit is “huge.”
There also was a bit of luck in Cape Madras’ success, Sisselman admits. She launched the business while Madras was still a fashion trend exiled to the 60s. But in 2007 Madras became the rage all over again, popping up on the shelves of such trendy stores as J. Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch, Sisselman says. “People ask ‘How did you know?,’” Sisselman says of the Madras craze. “That was a total fluke.”
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