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Charlie and Bill Freedman were both attending school in Utah in the early 1990s. As native New Yorkers, they were accustomed to outlet shopping but were dismayed to discover it was slim to nonexistent in Utah.
Meanwhile, Charlie and Bill's younger brother, Jonathan, who was 17, had started re-selling brand name liquidated clothing out of the back of his car. The brothers were impressed with Jonathan's operation when they were home from college for the summer and decided to try a similar approach in Utah. Charlie and Bill started selling liquidated clothing for J Crew, Gap and Polo out of a sandwich shop their friend owned. They reinvested the proceeds from clothing sales into the project and watched the growth of their fledging business that they named DownEast Outfitters.
In 1993, two years after they began, DownEast Outfitters was established enough that it had six profitable locations. In 1996, Charlie, Bill, Jonathan and Rich Israelsen, a friend who had joined the company, diversified by opening an off-price furniture store called DownEast Home. It was the same model as the one used to build their apparel business — buying seconds, returns and liquidations — with great success. But the biggest change came in 2005 when DownEast Outfitters began producing its own private label clothing line for women.
Today, that clothing line, DownEast Basics, is a staple store in malls throughout Utah and Idaho. Klane Murphy, who had an extensive background in consulting and venture capital, joined the Freedman bothers' company as the chief executive officer in 2006. Klane helped develop the company's growth strategy, and under his leadership, the company has more than tripled in size, growing to 36 store locations today.
Klane says DownEast Outfitters is distinguished not only as being one of the first liquidation outlets in the greater Salt Lake metro area but also as being one of the few major apparel manufacturers headquartered in the Rocky Mountains.
