Moms all across the United States know the CWDkids name. The Henrico-based children’s catalog and retail company has been “dressing kids like kids” for the past 21 years.
Last year, the family-owned business celebrated its 20th anniversary. Even though he was young at the time, Jim Klaus, now company president, remembers when the operation moved into a small office park off of Mayland Drive in western Henrico in 1979. At the time, there were no big-box stores, no upscale malls, and not even any fast-food restaurants in the vicinity. The closest eatery, he recalls, was in eastern Goochland.
That’s not the case today. That western sector of the county is one of the fastest-growing areas in Henrico in terms of retail and commercial development — and CWDkids has been having its own growth spurt. With $26 million a year in sales and two retail stores in Henrico, the company has established a solid presence in the children’s clothing market. Its growth prompted the business to add 3,000 square feet to its 7,000-square-foot headquarters building and warehouse in 2004.
The company traces its roots to Klaus’ great-grandfather, Julius Klaus, who served as one of the officers in Richmond Dry Goods Company, a textile distribution business that opened in 1911. The company expanded its presence in the marketplace when it purchased Rucker-Rosenstock, and later acquired 35 junior department stores (Southern Department Stores) in Virginia and the Carolinas.
When Richmond Dry Goods was spun off as a separate business in 1956, Julius Klaus’s son, Philip, bought the company. Five years later, his son, Philip Klaus, Jr., (CWDkids’ current CEO) joined the firm. By the mid-1960s, Richmond Dry Goods had become the largest distributor of branded textiles in the Southeast. The company handled 4,000 accounts in nine states, carrying major lines such as Buster Brown, Bates and Fieldcrest.
“The company would hold the inventory like a backroom for department stores so the stores didn’t have to hold as much stock,” Jim Klaus explains.
But when retailers began ordering directly from manufacturers in the early 1970s, the family didn’t see a viable future for the wholesale distributing business and shifted the company’s focus to retail.
Philip Klaus, Jr., opened a chain of children’s clothing stores called Small People in 1979, the same year the company moved to Henrico. He followed that track until 1987, when he heard that women’s clothier Carroll Reed would stop producing its children’s clothing catalog. “Dad decided he would start a kids catalog to take advantage of the fact that Carroll Reed was leaving the market,” Jim Klaus says. “He was looking for something new and exciting.”
The first Children’s Wear Digest catalog was an instant hit with customers, bringing in nearly 10,000 orders in the spring of 1987. Indeed, the response was so overwhelming that staff and family members had to be called in to help fill orders. The company later hired a third-party fulfillment company to process the purchases.
