NEW YORK, New York — P/Kaufmann Inc. will introduce a new brand in late 2012 called Hillbrown, through PK’s Clarence House division according to Bob Appelbaum, president of Clarence House.

The name Hillbrown itself was taken from the name of Peter Kaufmann’s father in law’s company, who Peter worked for in the 1940’s after arriving in the USA from Germany via England, Appelbaum said.

While other companies are buying up brands and the industry is further consolidating, P/Kaufmann has decided to grow this new Hillbrown brand under the design leadership of Donna May Woods, design director who joined the company fulltime last year. She was previously design director of Brunschwig & Fils and Scalamandre. Appelbaum said that P/Kaufmann will invest a sizeable sum in the new business.

“Hillbrown has a different handwriting than Clarence House,” he said. “Hillbrown is more traditional, a more historical product with a design pedigree based on documents as opposed to being the artsy and newsy design from Clarence House.  All of the new designs are expected to work together,” he said and will include prints as well as wovens from about 30 mills that will continue to supply both collections. Both lines will cover a broad price range, he said.

 “We hope to expand our customer base of interior designers with this new effort. The number of new sku’s in the collection is not known at this time but they will be shown alongside Clarence House products in the same agency and corporate showrooms around the USA.  F&FI