The behind-the-label New York company that designs, sources and ships the outerwear you already own.
Q4 DESIGNS LLC. The company's mark on a garment-district navy - fitting for an operator whose name nods to the fourth quarter, the peak season for the cold-weather apparel it specializes in.
Logo courtesy q4designs.com
Walk into almost any American department store this winter and you will pass rack after rack of familiar names: DKNY parkas, Reebok kids' snowsuits, a Jessica Simpson puffer, a Steve Madden shell. What most shoppers never learn is that a single New York company sits behind a good deal of that product - designing it, sourcing the fabric, managing the factories, planning the assortment and shipping it to stores. That company is Q4 Designs LLC.
Founded in 2011 by Harry Tawil and built on more than five decades of combined apparel experience, Q4 Designs describes itself plainly: "an apparel company that provides an innovative, growth-driven experience for our brand partners and retail customers." In practice, it is a full-service operator. It takes on the license for an established brand, immerses itself in that brand's mission and culture, and then runs the entire product life cycle on the brand's behalf.
The name is a quiet insider's joke. "Q4" - the fourth quarter - is when outerwear sells. It is the season of coats, snow gear and holiday racks, and it is the commercial heartbeat of a company whose specialties are outerwear and sportswear for men, women and children.
Q4 organizes around outcomes rather than departments. Each brand it manages passes through the same four disciplines - the reason a licensor can hand over a name and get finished, retail-ready product back.
Category-specific, trend-driven design for outerwear, sportswear, swimwear and accessories - tailored to each partner brand's identity.
Global sourcing, factory relationships, fabric technologies and social-compliance auditing, engineered for fast speed to market.
Product assortment strategy, inventory planning and B2B sales into wholesale and retail channels.
Supply-chain management, logistics, e-commerce fulfillment and day-to-day retail management for brand partners.
Q4's customers come in two layers. First are the brand owners and licensors - the companies that own famous names and want product made and managed well. Second are the retailers and e-commerce channels that ultimately stock the finished apparel. In under a decade and a half, founder Harry Tawil assembled what the company calls one of the most diversified portfolios of brands and products in the space.
A brand owner has a valuable name but not the machinery to design, source and ship seasonal apparel on a tight calendar. Q4 supplies that machinery end-to-end.
Rather than a pure factory or a pure design studio, Q4 runs the whole chain under one roof and studies each brand's culture before touching product - so licensed goods feel on-brand, not generic.
It sits in the licensed-apparel middle layer alongside operators like G-III and Perry Ellis - the unglamorous, essential space where names become stocked racks.
Q4 Designs runs a B2B, licensed-apparel model. It takes on brand licenses, manages the product life cycle from sketch to shelf, and earns through the sale and margin of the apparel it produces for partners. Industry estimates put the company at roughly 66 employees and about $27 million in annual revenue - modest headcount for a portfolio spanning nearly a dozen national brands.
Its expertise is concentrated where the season is hardest to win: outerwear. Cold-weather apparel is unforgiving. Miss the calendar and the coats arrive after the cold; misjudge the fabric and margins evaporate. Q4's emphasis on global sourcing, fabric technologies, social-compliance auditing and fast speed to market is a direct answer to that pressure.
The company is, by intention, invisible to the shopper. You see DKNY or Spyder on the zipper pull; you do not see Q4. In B2B apparel, that anonymity is not a weakness - it is the value proposition. The better Q4 disappears into a partner's success, the more that partner wants to keep it.
Harry Tawil launches the company, building on more than five decades of apparel experience.
The roster of licensed outerwear, sportswear and kids brands grows across categories.
Q4 updates its identity around the "Centers of Excellence" positioning.
Tawil's Outdoor Collective takes on the Spyder ski and snow apparel license from Authentic Brands Group.
"Q4" nods to the fourth quarter - peak season for the outerwear the company specializes in.
Its office at 20 W 33rd St sits steps from the Empire State Building in Manhattan's garment-adjacent district.
The portfolio ranges from kids' swimwear to men's ski shells - nearly the full temperature spectrum of apparel.
It designs, sources, produces and manages branded outerwear, sportswear, swimwear and accessories for licensed brand partners, handling the full product life cycle from a New York base.
Its portfolio includes DKNY, Reebok, Jessica Simpson, Steve Madden, Free Country, Bebe, Canada Weathergear, Snozu and - via founder Harry Tawil's Outdoor Collective - Spyder.
Harry Tawil founded Q4 Designs in 2011 and serves as CEO. He also co-founded Outdoor Collective, which secured the Spyder license in 2025.
It is headquartered at 20 W 33rd St in New York City, with roughly 66 employees.
Design; Sourcing & Production; Planning & Sales; and Operations.
Video: no official Q4 Designs YouTube channel or product-demo video was found in public sources. Search related Spyder apparel videos ▸