P.J. Salvage Founder Opens Venice Store
P.J. Salvage founder Mickey Sills has returned to the intimate apparel biz with his month-old Venice, Calif., store, Scanty.
The 750-square-foot store, featuring painted walls in tiered colors, velvet-curtain “circle” dressing rooms and a boys’ backroom offering Xbox and PlayStation video games and a refrigerator filled with drinks, sells the Scanty collection of printed underwear sets of tanks, T-shirts, briefs, camisoles and sweats. Retail prices range from $50 to $150 an item.
The store doesn’t follow the mold of a Victoria’s Secret or Frederick’s of Hollywood, according to Sills. “It’s more fun wear—not lingerie, but stuff you can wear at any time,” he said. Red Engine, Casabella, Project E and T-bags are lines also sold at the store.
In the next three to six months, Sills plans to license the Scanty line, which will be carried at the Work in Progress showroom at the Cooper Building in downtown Los Angeles starting in August. Denim and swimwear lines are in the pipeline as well, he said.
However, it’s not all about sales at his new business. The venture also includes an adjacent 250-square-foot studio where he works and plans to recruit other designers to create new clothing concepts and ventures that he can test in Scanty.
It’s that relaxed atmosphere that led Sills to Venice. “We wanted to be in an off-neighborhood that has a better clientele who doesn’t want to shop in cliquey destinations,” he said. “We’re in a perfect place to put stuff on the shelves that we love rather than follow what’s dictated by the market.”
Sills, who sold P.J. Salvage to Peter Burke in 1997, projects first-year retail sales of $500,000 and $1.5 million in wholesale revenues. —Nola Sarkisian-Miller
