Hype Lands a Retail Store in Santa Monica
Hype contemporary sportswear is growing its resume with the new title of retailer.
The label, a division of Vernon, Calif.-based Harkham Industries, opened a 1,600-square-foot store last month on the Third Street Promenade, a three-block stretch of stores in Santa Monica, Calif.
With a strong sales start this year—revenues are up 40 percent to 50 percent year-to-date, said owner Uri Harkham—the time seemed right for Hype to launch the new venture.
“There’s always been a plan to have a Hype flagship and it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to open in Santa Monica,” said Cassondra Ivey, creative director of Hype. “Our clothes are novelty buys with lots of embellishments and embroideries that will cater well to the eclectic Santa Monica shopper.”
Harkham, whose company manufacturers Hype Kids and Jonathan Martin Studio missy sportswear and licenses out Jonathan Martin contemporary/junior sportswear, expects the store to generate “well over” $1 million in sales in its first year. He said he’s scouting out another location in New York to open a second store in the next year.
The Santa Monica store carries blouses, sweaters, jeans, skirts, dresses, shoes and handbags as well as some items not sold at the several hundred stores that are wholesale accounts for Hype, including Fred Segal Santa Monica; Polka Dots & Moonbeams on Third Street in Los Angeles; Little Bohemian in Laguna Beach, Calif.; and Coquette in San Francisco.
Ivey said that the store, designed with teal cement floors and an exposed brick wall, still has a few finishing touches needed on its boudoir design before its June 11 grand opening party, but that hasn’t been a deterrent.
“In the first week, we didn’t even have a sign out—just a paper bag in the window with our name—and people were still pouring in,” she said.
The rollout of novelty jeans for Fall and Holiday collections is in the pipeline, Ivey said, and some designs will be store exclusives. Home accents are another category Hype may sell using its distinctive prints, she added. —Nola Sarkisian-Miller
