California Apparel News

The Feb. 3–5 run of West Coast Collective at the W Hotel in Los Angeles opened on a relatively bright note despite the gloom that has hung over the menswear industry in recent months, as approximately 225 boutique buyers shopped the show’s 150 upscale men’s lines.

“The grumbling and griping is done,” said Heidi Kearns-Murray, a rep for Jhane Barnes and Joseph Abboud. Kearns-Murray said that people in the menswear business had been complaining about the state of the industry for the past six months but seem to currently have a much more upbeat outlook.

“There’s a better, stronger attitude right now,” she said. “Everybody is starting out on a new note.”

And that new, stronger attitude is promising for West Coast Collective, which is preparing to take its show to Las Vegas for the first time ever later this month to run concurrently with MAGIC International.

The Las Vegas show, set to run Feb. 18–20 at the Palm Resort, hopes to draw some of the national and international buyers from MAGIC.

“The Las Vegas version is a national show, while this [the Los Angeles show] is more of a regional show,” said Hyela Soblosky, one of the co-founders of West Coast Collective and a rep for Jhane Barnes.

West Coast Collective was formed four years ago as a small, focused presentation for upscale menswear. The biannual show, which typically is held a few weeks prior to MAGIC, has become an alternative to that massive exhibition.

“We created [the new Las Vegas show] because we felt that MAGIC was losing focus in better menswear,” Soblosky said.

Soblosky noted how several exhibitors had left MAGIC but would still travel to Las Vegas with appointments to show buyers their lines in their hotel rooms.

“I spoke to one retailer who told me that he was doing one day at MAGIC and two days going from one hotel to the next one meeting with people who had pulled out of MAGIC,” she said. “We got the idea to get all these people grouped together under one roof. Now, people are pulling out of MAGIC just to do our show.”

Some West Coast Collective exhibitors will do both shows in Las Vegas, but others—including Joseph Abboud, Ted Baker and Mani By Giorgio Armani—have left MAGIC for the new event, organizers said.

But the close timing of both upcoming Las Vegas shows didn’t seem to affect attendance at the Los Angeles show—although traffic dropped off on opening day in the late afternoon, when buyers and reps tuned in to watch the Super Bowl.

The show drew both buyers who show at West Coast Collective exclusively and those who shop it in addition to MAGIC.

Kathi Fuller, owner of Fuller’s, came to West Coast Collective specifically looking for “something special and something different” for her men’s store in Dana Point, Calif. She said she found the items she was looking for at the California trade show and that she skips MAGIC.

“I don’t really need to do MAGIC,” said Fuller. “I find what I need here. We just come here and then we have the reps come to our store to finish. Why should we do the hustle and bustle of Vegas when it’s all right here?”

Several retailers echoed Fuller’s position regarding the two shows.

Heidi Laird, also a rep for Jhane Barnes and Joseph Abboud, said that the retailers she does business with prefer West Coast Collective to MAGIC.

“In Vegas, we had vendors who went from hotel to hotel to hotel and that created a huge problem,” said Laird. “Here, we are grouped together and it’s one huge, fun party.”

One such retailer at the show was Bruce Rothenberg, owner of Rothenberg’s, a men’s apparel store in San Francisco that also sells vintage Cuban cigars. Rothenberg said he never attends MAGIC and was very focused for West Coast Collective, making a great deal of appointments before arriving.

“This is the only show I do,” said Rothenberg. “It’s too cold in New York and Vegas is too big.”

For some retailers as well as some clothing reps, both shows are equally as important, each with specific purposes.

Lynn Swink, merchandise manager for Parts Unknown, a chain of tourist-oriented stores with locations in California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, came to West Coast Collective to “write specific lines and make commitments.”

“We preview here and finish up at MAGIC,” said Swink. “We do MAGIC for ladieswear and footwear.”

Rick Erwin, owner of R&R Menswear in Palm Springs, Calif., is a regular exhibitor with West Coast Collective in Los Angeles and MAGIC and also plans to join the former show’s Las Vegas debut.

“With a show like [West Coast Collective], you can get a lot more lines out of the way,” said Erwin. “It’s much more convenient and more efficient to do it this way.”

Erwin said that while he finds MAGIC to be important, he will be looking for more splinter shows to cut down the time he spends at that event.

“You have to do [MAGIC] at this point, but any show that comes up where I can chip off some of the stuff I do in Vegas, we will have to do,” he said. “Doing this show cuts half of Vegas out for us.”