California Apparel News

The retail strategy seemed sound when Howard Markman and a partner opened the Dungarees L.A. boutique in Santa Monica, Calif.: Provide a wide selection of designer denim to customers in the affluent section of the city near bordering Brentwood. Add to the mix the same denim labels in infants’ and children’s sizes to provide one-stop shopping for busy moms shopping for themselves in the store or picking up shoes for their kids at the children’s shoe store next door. Plus, the strategy—or at least the denim part of it—was already in place and working at a sister store opened several years earlier in Studio City, Calif.

But the management soon noticed a problem with the strategy. It seemed women shopping for their children didn’t have time to shop for themselves; and the women shopping for themselves did not want to share the small, 2,500-square-foot space with harried mothers shopping for their impatient toddlers. Plus, the merchandise mix left a huge gap between toddlers and adult apparel—sending part of the existing customer base out the door when they hit their tweens and teens.

So the management changed tack, launching a new strategy a year and a half ago that has included hiring a new general manager, phasing out the children’s apparel and bringing in skate-, surf- and street-inspired lines for the teen and older markets, and adding more contemporary lines to the existing mix of high-end denim labels such as Earl Jeans, Diesel and Replay.

A year and a half later the new strategy seems to be working and store sales have moved into “rapid growth,” according to Markman, who declined to release the company’s sales numbers.

But Markman said he and Dungarees partner Gary Friedman found the two stores were moving in different directions. The original Studio City boutique still retains its denim focus, but at the Santa Monica store, denim—while still important—became part of the overall merchandising mix.

So Markman and Friedman decided to amicably part ways. Markman incorporated, forming MNM Ventures Corp. and granting then-general manager Rob Keirstead an ownership stake in the store. (Keirstead now holds the title senior vice president, Markman is president.)

Continuous Flow

Keirstead oversees the buying for both the contemporary men’s and women’s merchandise at the Santa Monica store, as well as the young men’s and junior street- and skate-inspired apparel. The store separates the two by keeping the street and skate lines in a small section of the store’s 425-square-foot mezzanine. The contemporary lines and all the denim take up the main 2,100-square-foot selling area.

The new merchandise mix provides a seamless transition from the apparel targeting younger customers through adult, providing a “continuous flow,” Keirstead said.

The store’s clientele ranges from middle school-aged through adult and the merchandise mix reflects that age range, allowing the customers to “grow into other lines in the store from high school to college to the business place,” Markman said.

Plus, the young men’s and junior merchandise is selling to adults as well, Markman added.

“It is a really nice mix for us because we’re getting a lot of mothers who are going upstairs with their daughters and sons and [are] finding things that they would wear and mixing in with the products we carry downstairs, which is a little more high-end focused toward adults,” he added.

The small staff of four sales associates—Markman calls them fashion consultants—is trained in the finer points of good customer service by Keirstead.

“I train my team members on what comes into the store, how it fits,” he said. “When the customer comes back, they want to see the same person, they become assimilated to that person—the person who fit them the best and that’s who they want to be helped by.”

Keirstead’s retail experience stretches back to recurring stints “in every department” at Philadelphia-based department store Wanamakers. He spent several years as a touring musician before retiring from the music industry and returning to retail as a sales associate at the Structure menswear store in Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks, Calif.—where he met and was recruited by Markman to join the Dungarees store.

Local Buyinghellip;For Now

Keirstead took his first buying trip at the March 1999 run of MAGIC International—where he started off in the vast, mostly menswear-filled halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

“I was highly overwhelmed,” he said, “Then I walked the women’s side [at the smaller Sands Expo Convention Center] and thought, ’this isn’t bad.’”

So far, Keirstead has limited his buying to West Coast shows, including MAGIC and Action Sports Retailer Trade Expo and market weeks at the California Mart and New Mart, although he said he might make a trip to New York in the future to shop the Fashion Coterie show.

The store currently carries about 200 different lines. Most items are less than $100, although the store carries some higher-priced items, Keirstead said. Some of the labels include Katayone Adeli, William B and Catherine Malandrino. The store receives new merchandise weekly to keep the stock fresh—and to entice customers to return to the store to see what’s new.

“We’re not really in the business of storing merchandise,” said Markman. “Everything we bring in to the store goes out on the floor, is sold and we bring in new merchandise.”

Most of the customer sales are for multiple items—full ensembles rather than individual pieces, Markman said.

“Our business is definitely growing,” he said. “Obviously we are increasing sales dollars, but we are also moving a lot of units.”

New Business, New Name

The next step for the retailer is to change the name of the store. Friedman retained ownership of the Dungarees name after the split. Plus, the name implied a stronger concentration of denim than the store had any longer.

“The name of the store didn’t reflect the merchandise,” Markman said.

Keirstead and Markman considered several possibilities—they even ran a few names by key customers to gauge their opinions.

“We figure they are our core customers who are really interested in what we’ve been doing, so we might as well find out what their thoughts are on it too,” Keirstead said.“Because we’re looking for more of the same kind of people and if they think the name is cool and it’s something that they would support, we figure the same kind of people would be attracted to the name.”

Markman and Keirstead weighed several name options before choosing Threadz. The company has applied to change its dba—doing business as—name, a process that should be finalized by the end of the month, Keirstead said. The store is currently doing business as Dungarees L.A. until the name change is official.

Changing the store’s name carries another benefit, Keirstead noted—the opportunity to have a second grand opening.

“We really wanted to give it a new, clean slate, to try to get a new honeymoon period out of it,” he said.