♦ Incorporated in 1999 as Raw Jeans Inc. (Raw), later changed to Raw Apparel Group. (RAG) is a Lithonia, Georgia-based apparel company.
♦Owned and run by the Hendricks family; founded in 1986 by brothers Gregory and Dennis Hendricks.
♦Designs, contract for the manufacture of, markets, and sells apparel and apparel related products.
♦ Its product lines include women’s jeans lines, Raw™ and Honey Blues™, men’s office casual and sportswear lines, Navigator™ and Navigator Sportswear™, a swimwear line, S.O.S™, designer labels, Dennis Hendricks Collection™ (DHC), contemporary sportswear collections, Shirley George™, and Evelyn Braxton Collection™, and a Christian sporstwear division, Heavenly People™. The Raw Jeans line is the first line of jeans made to fit African American women.
♦Targets urban areas with substantial African American populations. Distributes through department stores, specialty chain stores, discount stores, and boutiques.
♦ RAG has offices in Georgia and Illinois. The company also has a website, http://www.navsportswear.com, for it's mens collection, Navigator Sportswear.
History
Dennis Hendricks, co-founder of Raw Apparel Group. was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and was the second of three brothers. While attending college, A fellow student thought his drawings were fashion designs. This sparked an interest to learn more about fashion design. A local husband and wife team taught him some fashion basics. Equipped with only a dream and determination he decided to create a clothing company. He invited his younger brother Gregory to join him in the venture. Their father, George, who owned a successful auto body repair shop financed the company’s early years.
During the first several years of the company, the brothers tried to learn as much as possible about fashion and business. Dennis would make different designs and they would sell them to friends, family and co-workers. During this time, Dennis moved to Georgia but the brothers kept working on building the company.
In 1996, the brothers realized that there were not any jeans made to fit Black women. Believing this was a market niche that could put their company on the map, they interviewed Black women to find out what were the most common problems fitting jeans. They started developing and testing jeans.
In July of 1998, the Chicago Defender and Black Thought newspapers, and Youngsitas.com ezine ran stories on the jeans and the company. In 1999, the company was incorporated in Georgia as Raw Jeans Inc. During a segment of Black Entertainment Televsion’s Planet Groove, some of the dancers wore outfits from the Raw collection. Dennis was interviewed and put on a mini fashion show on NBC’s Peachtree Morning show. In the spring of 2000, Dennis was featured in Atlanta Good Life magazine. The summer of 2001 saw more press coverage including the first national exposure for the company when Black Men magazine did a feature story on Dennis.In October of 2001, Upscale magazine featured the jeans in a story about the best fitting jeans. In December of 2001 the company launched its website, www.hagllc.com. The year ended with the ManAlive store chain adding the line to its store chain.
2002 had some exciting events for the Raw line. Several articles on the jeans appeared in magazines including Sister 2 Sister, Upscale, Rolling Out, and On Common Ground. Recording artist, Nivea, featured the Raw line in her music video.
In 2006 the company changed its name to Raw Apparel Group. It added sportswear to compliment its jean line. It also expanded the jeans line to include women who have a hard time finding jeans that fit. The company is launching a men’s office casual and sportswear line under the trade names Navigator and Navigator Sportswear. The Heavenly People division started selling its Where Would U.B. Without Jesus™ t-shirts to churches and Christian stores. An e-newsletter and ecommerce is planned for the Winter of 2006. The swimwear line S.O.S will be introduced for the Fall of 2006. A new line of urban athletic wear, Urban Players™, will be launched in 2007.
