Winter is an awkward business partner when you sell summer. ELAN had built a name around clothes for warm places: the beach, the resort, the holiday you spend months anticipating. Then came the practical question beneath the pretty fabric. What should the company sell when its customers needed a sweater?
- A resort-wear specialist grew into a year-round women’s label.
- Wholesale relationships sit alongside its own shop and online store.
- A pandemic-era online push had a $500,000 budget, according to its founder.
That question makes ELAN more interesting than another rack of vacation dresses. Fashion companies sell a mood, but they also have to fill a calendar. A customer may love your clothes and still have no reason to buy them in November. Giving her another reason can change the business.
01 / Before the rack, a car trunk
Elan Savir’s early selling method was refreshingly physical. He worked with secondhand jeans and other fabrics, reworking them into denim pieces and club dresses, then drove along the Florida coast with the designs in his trunk. This was a business close enough to its buyers to hear the answer immediately.
Miami supplied a useful setting. In a 2021 interview with Lifestyle Media Group, Savir recalled the local factories and fabric mills that made clothing feel like an obvious occupation. His future father-in-law ran boutiques in Hollywood Beach. The opportunity was visible in the people around him, before it became a brand strategy.
ELAN dates its founding to 1991. The label developed its resort-wear identity and, eventually, a broader wardrobe. In that same interview, Savir described the expansion into fall clothing as a way to reach new customers. Spring, summer and winter followed, with resort retaining its own place in the assortment.
02 / Sell the other months
His 2017 VoyageMIA interview puts the commercial motive plainly: the company wanted more winter business. Savir recalled bringing in a partner in 2001 and widening the line. He also described resistance to change as a recurring challenge. The difficulty was letting a successful specialty become something larger.
For a boutique buyer, the appeal is easy to picture. A supplier already associated with relaxed dressing can offer another outfit when temperatures fall. That is an editorial reading of ELAN’s expansion, rather than a claim about any individual store’s results. The useful principle is adjacency: follow a familiar customer into another part of her life.
Today, the product navigation makes the transition visible. Cover-ups share the shop with jackets, cardigans, jumpsuits and matching sets. ELAN occupies the contemporary clothing market, with a travel-minded point of view and a preference for relaxed silhouettes. The company’s stated promise is comfort with enough polish to leave the house.
Product categories, not a sales breakdown.
03 / The jeans have a secret
Consider the Sweatpant Jeans collection. The Jojo style combines cotton fabric, an elastic waistband and a track stripe with a denim look. Jenna offers a denim-inspired wash and a relaxed pull-on shape. The proposition is delightfully literal: the appearance of jeans with the ease of sweats.
Listed prices give that proposition some context. Jenna was $128 and Jojo $144 when checked in October 2026. Elsewhere, the resort assortment listed a $72 Serra knit shirt and $88 Sosa crochet pants. These are individual price examples, subject to change, rather than a calculated average for the label.
The competition for this purchase is broad. A shopper can compare relaxed contemporary clothes across boutiques and department-store brands. ELAN’s distinction rests in the combination: resort roots, a wider seasonal range and established retail distribution. Its products are stocked by Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s; Copper Penny’s assortment also shows the label in a boutique setting.
04 / The budget he kept postponing
Online retail brought a different hesitation. In an October 2023 Surf Expo interview, Savir said the expense had repeatedly deterred him. The pandemic helped change his mind. ELAN allocated $500,000 to build the channel, and, he said, revenue began before the entire amount was spent.
Allocated to build e-commerce.
Actual total spending was not disclosed.
At that point, retail and e-commerce together accounted for about 10% of the business, by his account. That historical proportion matters. The digital investment sat inside a company still largely selling through other channels. A website producing orders did not suddenly erase the wholesale engine.
Revenue alone cannot tell us whether advertising, fulfillment and returns produce an attractive margin. That is the condition attached to copying this move: a channel needs workable economics. A larger wardrobe also demands more design and inventory decisions. Adding products or buying traffic is easy to describe; making either pay requires discipline.
05 / A factory gives you options
ELAN has also operated beyond the name on its own labels. Savir described private-label and custom work in 2017, with design and manufacturing capabilities supporting other businesses. The expertise includes making the garment, fitting it and supplying a buyer who will sell it under another name.
In 2020, that production capacity took an unexpected turn. ELAN shifted its seamstresses exclusively to masks for seven weeks and donated 40,000 to Memorial Healthcare System. The factory offered a practical way to respond when a different kind of garment was urgently needed.
“You’re only as good as your last line.”Elan Savir · Lifestyle Media Group · 2021
06 / The next sales floor
The family remains involved in collections, fittings, photography and online commerce. Its sales experiments continue, too: the verified Elan’s Daughter store on Whatnot offers live sample sales. Meanwhile, the published Summer 2027 lookbook presents eyelet, embroidery and coordinated separates for retail buyers planning ahead.
For shoppers, ELAN offers a wardrobe spanning the trip and the ordinary days around it. For other businesses, the more useful idea is specific: find the occasion your existing customer still shops elsewhere for. A sweater was a sensible place for this beachwear company to begin.