California Apparel News

Los Angeles-based junior manufacturer Hot Kiss has moved to a larger West Coast showroom, which the company plans to keep open five days a week in a bid to entice retailers to begin thinking of the showroom as the company’s “home base,” according to Hot Kiss owner Moshe Tsabag.

“We knew we had the right products but we want [retailers] to learn to come to this showroom,” Tsabag said. “We want them to come here because we’re able to cater to them andhellip;they should be coming to us over here.”

The new showroom is down the hall from the company’s old showroom on the eighth floor of the California Mart. The new space, at three times the size of the original, is 1,707 square feet and staffed five days a week, “369 days a year,” Tsabag said.

The company also moved to a larger New York showroom at 1466 Broadway. The 2,600-square-foot space has six viewing stations and a conference room, but Tsabag stressed that the showroom in Los Angeles is the “main showroom.” Both showrooms will house the label’s sportswear, dress and newly launched denim divisions.

The company also recently doubled its national sales staff, adding Barnett and Marcia Priceman to head East Coast sales to specialty store chains, Alina Fattorosi to the West Coast denim division and Harvey Taub to the East Coast denim division and Arthur Drubin to the Southeast denim division.

Los Angeles may have the largest concentration of junior manufacturers but not all of them show their lines locally. Most junior manufacturers in Los Angeles travel to New York each month to show their lines to retailers. And there is only one market week in Los Angeles that caters to this segment.

Tsabag said he hopes the new West Coast showroom will reverse the trend among West Coast manufacturers to show their lines in New York each month.

The designer recalls a not-so-distant time in the 1970s and 1980s when Los Angeles had the power to draw retailers out to the West Coast to shop the market. But, “[in the 1990s] everyone got spoiled,” he said. “Even Southern California retailers [now go] to New York to view a new collection or a new season.”

Los Angeles once hosted five junior market weeks each year—in January, April, June, August and October, Tsabag said, but that has dropped down to one junior market week each year in early October.

“Los Angeles is the center and it always was,” he said. “Unfortunately, we take this product and take it to the East Coast.”

Tsabag said he sees positive signs of a shift west. Irvine, Calif.-based junior and young men’s retailer Wet Seal has begun shopping Hot Kiss’ West Coast showroom. Los Angeles-based junior retailer Windsor Stores is in negotiations with the Cal Mart to open a buying office in the building—joining San Diego-based junior retailer Charlotte Russe, which already has a buying office on the Cal Mart’s eighth floor. (The day Tsabag spoke with California Apparel News, members of St. Louis-based May Company’s merchandising team were in the new showroom for a pre-MAGIC International look at the line.)

“Obviously some of the large retailers are starting to look back again and take a stand to make Los Angeles as important as it always was and it will be [again] as a fashion center,” Tsabag said.

Los Angeles has the potential to be more of a fashion center for junior merchandise than New York, Tsabag said.

“Let’s face it, when it comes to the junior business, Los Angeles represents number one in the country, more than New York, more than anywhere else,” he said. “There are more junior companies in Los Angeles. They have innovative products and they’re happening and they’re based out here, not in New York.”

Tsabag said he hopes other local junior manufacturers will “take a stand” and encourage retailers to look at their lines in Los Angeles.

“If people in the industry take a stand like me and have their showrooms staffed five days a week and show their products here, we will be able to pull some of those retailers from back east to Los Angeles,” he said, noting that many junior manufacturers open and staff their showrooms only during market week in October or when they have appointments with retailers.

“We have the power of draw here,” he said. “The heart and soul of the fashion industry and manufacturing is Los Angeles.