Today, Chu is Nautica’s plenipotentiary and the brand boasts twenty product lines in seven business units with a stable of designers. Global retail sales in 2001 totaled US$ 1.85 billion.

Nautica’s largest market after the United States is Europe where the company continues to open new stores. However, the brand has also been expanding its global reach at a steady pace, signing major licensing from Mexico and Panama (1989) to Singapore (1996). It currently operates about 80 overseas retail outlets. Despite the international scope, the brand aims to reflect an entirely ageless, classic American style.

Nautica’s logo is that of the J-class sailboat, chosen for its “eloquent expression of excellence in design, quality in craftsmanship and harmony in form and function.” This logo marries well with the Nautica name, which was chosen to “identify a concept that is timeless and evolutionary in scope and to reflect a lifestyle of energy, activities and fitness.” To boost this classic maritime image, Nautica also sponsors the Stars and Stripes, an America’s Cup yacht.

Nautica does well to headquarter its branding efforts around the timeless, classic American style; a style which doesn’t change drastically over time and tends to attract a very brand-loyal type of consumer. During the initial years, Nautica’s goal was to build brand recognition. It did this by sending a singularly sculpted message about what it means to be Nautica, employing well-coordinated tactics rooted in the central “classic” image. Additionally, in keeping with its well-clad affluent consumers, Nautica doesn’t skimp on advertising efforts, which include high-cost print ads in target-appropriate magazines such as GQ and Vanity Fair.

Nautica’s strategy for cautious design diversification and the establishing of a brand lifestyle does not differ that greatly from its competitors. Brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, though slightly more urban and hip, similarly use cautious expansion strategies with the goal of establishing a cohesive lifestyle that will promote brand loyalty.

This idea of establishing a branded style for living can be seen in Nautica’s forays into areas as wide as golf, home furnishings and co-branded automobiles. This is to say that, if one wished, one could live “Nautically.” One could drive a Nautica-inspired car to work in a Nautica suit and Nautica glasses and return to slip into Nautica pajamas and kiss one’s Nautica-clad spouse while lounging on the Nautica Home couch and watching America’s Cup highlights of the Nautica-sponsored Stars and Stripes on TV with one’s Nautica Kids-dressed children. All that while smelling like Nautica Latitude/Longitude.

From this solid base, Nautica has been able to make some prudent forays into the trench warfare that is the all-worshipped (though almost impossible to maintain) loyalty of what has simply become known as the MTV demographic; youths under the age of 22 or 23. Several styles of jeans lines that would probably be too hip for the archetypal yacht clubber have been introduced and tested in “laboratory” outlets such as Nautica’s New York Rockefeller Plaza concept store, open since 2001.

The biggest danger to Nautica’s global lifestyle goal is impatience. As a publicly traded brand name, there is always the danger that stockholders could clamor for a greater return, pointing to the larger (though short-term) returns of more hip, trend-conscious brands. However, if Nautica can maintain its heretofore successful strategy of conservative, incremental brand expansion with a focus on brand harmony, it will truly warrant the use of “American classic.”

Abram D. Sauer is a writer currently living in New York. He was a columnist for The China Daily while living in Beijing and is co-founder of Chopstickfactory.com.