LOS ANGELES — Innova Luxury Group, which owned the license for the former Badgley Mishka Home line of furniture and accents, has taken the line forward minus the branded name that initially gave it recognition, particularly among followers of women’s fashion.
Jonathan Bass, CEO of Innova Luxury Group, said that the line was launched in early 2017 as a total home collection, named for fashion icons Mark Badgley and James Mishka.
Innova decided to abandon the license in 2020 after a three-year run that began with its launch at New York Fashion Week in the early 2017 and then in the April 2017 High Point Market, initially offering 45 SKUs of upper end bedroom, dining and occasional furniture, including home entertainment.
While the license helped bring the aesthetic of women’s fashion to furniture, Innova found the brand itself didn’t necessarily resonate in the furniture marketplace.
“What we recognized was that the brand didn’t really impact the purchase, so it was product driven. … The brand did not get the recognition in the market that we assumed it would get.”
That said, once the licensing partners parted ways, Bass and his company continued to produce the same high-end designs, just bearing the Innova name instead of Badgley Mishka. The line continues to be produced in the company’s 300,000-square-foot plant in San Luis, Mexico, which has been operational since July 2011.
At this factory, the company controls the quality of the line, while also offering a mix of materials such as metal, glass and luxury fabrics. Bass noted that the emphasis remains on the quality and construction capabilities that the plant can offer.
In this respect, the Mexico factory’s relationship to the brand is similar to heritage brands in Italy, Portugal or Spain where the factories are owned by or tied to the brands themselves. Many of these type brands will show in Milan or Maison Objet in Paris, for example, where the Badgley Mishka line also has shown.
“What Innova Luxury Group offers us at the factory is the ability to set the quality level and the expectation that this is where the quality needs to be no matter what the price point,” Bass said, noting that the factory also has custom production capabilities, offering some 30 wood finishes, 10 different metal finishes and 200 fabrics.
Today, the line has grown to about 200 pieces, half of which is upholstery and half in the bedroom, dining, occasional, home entertainment and home office categories. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the company has continued to develop new product, with about 10% of the line being new in the past year, Bass said.
Bass noted that, even without the license, price points remain similar to what they were previously. “We were able to absorb all these cost increases without raising prices. The prices are the same, but we didn’t have to raise prices.”
Those prices reflect the luxury nature of the line, with items such as the Monterey cocktail retailing on the website of one upper end retailer at $5,100 and a smaller-scale Monterey half-size cocktail retailing at $3,800.
On the same site, the 95-inch Marmont and Palisades sofas retail at $8,850 and $9,000, respectively, while the Balboa étagère and Chocolate Truffle dresser retail at $7,500 and $4,500, respectively.
While Bass called Mark Badgley and James Mishka amazing people to work with, he said that it made sense to invest in the line’s quality and value — putting the money back into the product — vs. fees to have a licensed brand.
“Long after the brand name is forgotten, the quality gets you further because if the quality of the product sustains the test of time, they come back and shop the product,” Bass said, adding that what Innova offers is the ability to help consumers create a look that is unique to their homes. “Looking back, we really felt that the product was what sold, not the name.”
