Boy Oh Boy! to Sell Kids Fashion
Little boys are interested in skateboarding, monster movies and, if Gary and Carol Ulaner are right, casual contemporary clothes.
These first-time retailers will be opening Boy Oh Boy!, a casual contemporary store for newborn to 13-year-old boys, Aug. 13 at the Woodland Hills Village Shopping Center in Woodland Hills, Calif.
The Ulaners felt there was a niche for little boys’ fashion clothing after parents at their 8-year-old son’s elementary school complained there was no place to buy nice clothes for their sons, said Gary Ulaner, 42.
“There’s a sea of little girls’ clothes [stores]. Boys’ sections in department stores are minuscule. We had to shop multiple stores to get good clothing,” he said.
The store will carry labels such as Puma, James Perse, Sozo and Catamini. Retail price points will be $18 to $32 for T-shirts, $70 for jackets and $30 for jeans. Eventually, the co-owners hope to sell skate and surf clothes.
Carol Ulaner designed the look of the 1,800-square-foot store, which features fixtures reminiscent of the chain-link fences surrounding sports fields at schools.
The Ulaners hope to build a new store every year and eventually franchise their concept. Gary Ulaner will keep his job as a group project manager at Cupertino, Calif.–based Symantec Corp., which makes the Norton AntiVirus software. He will also work as chief operations officer of Boy Oh Boy!, and Carol Ulaner will be president.
Kurt Barnard, the retail analyst who publishes Barnard’s Retail Trend Report, said the market for children’s clothing is growing. “The birth rate is strong, and things that are needed by kids are likely to become more and more important,” he said. —Andrew Asch
