Fubu home line on the horizon

NEW YORK — Fubu Home is weeks away from its retail debut, with four beds from its Young Adult program scheduled to begin rolling out in the specialty channel in May and its department store rollout set for late summer.

Produced under license by Haywin Textile Products, the home line leverages the design of Fubu's urban streetwear and formalwear lines.

In the interim between showroom introduction in fall 2002 and its pending retail incarnation, the home program has made one shift — dropping a duvet cover top-of-bed offering in favor of mini comforter sets that include a pair of shams. The sets will retail around $199.

Although bath will not be part of the initial rollout, it will begin arriving at stores later in the year, according to Leslie Short, Fubu's president of marketing and advertising.

For now, Fubu's marketing arm is working on product placements for the home line on television, in movies and in lifestyle consumer magazine coverage, much as it does for its signature apparel programs.

The design house also will produce a Fubu catalog covering a multitude of product categories, including home, "that's more like a coffee table book," Short said.

And although its home textiles launch is just getting under way, the label is already considering its expansion into additional home categories, she said.

"If you look at bath accessories, you can see we're already thinking about the plate collection. And we're thinking about the furniture collection," Short said. "But the timing has to be right."

For the moment, Fubu has focused on extending its key apparel looks into the nascent home program. During the recent New York Home Textiles Market, Haywin introduced two new designs in the Young Adult line. Velour takes as its inspiration a Fubu velour sweat suit in signature Carolina blue, featuring a ribbed knit insert in the center of the comforter as well as along on the bottom of the dust ruffle and on the cuff of the pillow shams.

"The [Fubu] owners built this company on what they like and what they want to live with," said Short. "So one day everyone was talking, and we thought, "We've done so well with the sweat suit — how do we make it a into a bed?"

Also new in the Young Adult line is the reversible Warm Up bed, mimicking almost literally the design of athletes' slap-away warm-up pants in a woven poly/nylon top of bed that actually consists of a Carolina blue comforter and a navy blue comforter with Fubu logo embroidery that snap together on three sides to form one comforter. The top can reverse or can take a blanket insert for additional warmth. Coordinating dec pillows, pillow cases and shams also reverse to the two colors.

Under Fubu Home's Luxury line, the label introduced three beds this market.

Tuxedo features a black satin velour, tone-on-tone stripe comforter with tack quilting along with crisp white pintuck sheeting. An accompanying decorative pillow is constructed of Fubu tuxedo vest fabric, with cloth-covering buttons.

Crazy Stitch is a raisin-hued faux suede/micro fiber velour with railroad stitching that gives the suggestion of patchwork without the actual patching. Shams and dec pillows are trimmed in shearling, along with stuffed shearling Euros.

Splatter is a very fine wale velour corduroy comforter in a black, gray and white design that resembles splotched clothing in the aftermath of paintball conflict. Shearling is used on the sham trim, dec pillow reverse and the stuffed Euro.