Lisa Kline Opens Two More Stores
It’s only February, but 2004 is already shaping up to be one of the busiest years in Lisa Kline’s life.
The retailer, who owns two successful women’s and men’s boutiques on Los Angeles’ fashionable Robertson Boulevard, is preparing to give birth to her first child in May and embark on the biggest expansion of her 9-year-old company.
Kline said she expects to open a men’s store in Malibu and an outlet store in Los Angeles in March. The two stores will join her pair of boutiques on Robertson, as well as the Internet store she started in January.
“We outgrew the expansion in our women’s store. I was kicked out of my own office there,” Kline said of her company’s fast growth.
In 2002, she doubled the size of the Lisa Kline women’s store, which had opened in 1995. Lisa Kline Men has been in business since 1999.
Kline’s new corporate offices, Internet store operations, photo studios, and shipping and receiving will be located in the back of the outlet store, naturally called Lisa Kline “Outlet.” The outlet’s estimated opening date is March 15. The backroom operations were formerly located in the women’s store at 136 S. Robertson Blvd.
Lisa Kline “Outlet” will be located at 7207 Melrose Ave. at the cross street of Formosa Avenue. This 4,000-square-foot building stood vacant for the past five years and once housed Stateside, a vintage-clothing store. The new store will take up the front 1,000 square feet of the building, and the remaining 3,000 square feet will house the company’s backroom operations, which Kline said will employ 30 people by the end of the year. Outlet discounts will range from 20 percent to 75 percent. She said the outlet will add new stock every two weeks.
The Malibu boutique, Lisa Kline Men, is scheduled to open on March 1. Kline subleased 1,400 square feet from home furnishings store Room at the Beach, located at 23410 Civic Center Way at the Malibu Country Mart, a shopping center dominated by independent boutiques. Apparel businesses include Crush, a fashion-forward young contemporary women’s boutique, and a Banana Republic women’s store, one of the few chains at the center. The center also houses a Starbucks and an independent movie theater.
Kline had been intending to open a Malibu store since mid-2003. She hopes to draw customers from Malibu’s environs as well as from the wealthy neighborhoods of Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Westlake Village.
“The beauty of this boutique is that there are few men’s stores in Malibu, so I’m going to fill a void,” Kline said.
Ray Craig, the president of Malibu’s Chamber of Commerce, believes the Los Angeles retailer has made an astute observation about his city.
“We really haven’t had much [in] men’s stores,” he said. “If you have a problem, if you need another pair of underwear here, you’re in trouble.”
One of the last major men’s stores in Malibu was a business called Dean’s, which closed more than a decade ago after proprietor Dean Mc- Cloud retired, according to Craig. Theodore Men’s, Malibu Lifestyles and surfwear shop Becker also sell men’s apparel in the well-off beach town.
The Malibu men’s store will specialize in clothing similar to that sold in the 980-square-foot men’s store on Robertson, except it will emphasize a more casual angle, with more sweats and shorts, than the collections of collared shirts, T-shirts, sweaters and accessories the original men’s store has carried for the past five years. The Malibu store will share the price points of the Robertson stores, which have clothing ranging from $15 to $500.
The design of the Malibu store will be similar to the Lisa Kline Men store on Robertson, but it will have a beach/surf look with lightblue walls, white floors, dark wood furniture and vintage surfboards.
The new stores are following a good business year for Kline. She said sales doubled at the Lisa Kline Men and women’s stores. She credited part of the success to the launch of her signature brand of men’s clothing, which includes T-shirts, sweaters and collared shirts.
“I do everything on instinct,” Kline said. “When I doubled the size of the original store, my accountant said: ’Don’t think that you’re going to get double the sales. There’s a lot of risk to what you’re doing.’ But we took the risk, and now we have a much more beautiful store.”
