The Online Revolution Needs Old Business, Retailer Says
Everything old is new again.
Hotter Than Hollywood was a Los Angeles–based e-commerce boutique flying high off of the e-commerce boom. But Mary Helen Shashy and Mike Misetich, the owners of the Internet boutique, felt that they were going to have to turn to an old retail strategy to ensure their continued online success, so they opened a bricks-and-mortar store.
The e-commerce entrepreneurs opened their first physical boutique, also called Hotter Than Hollywood, at 145 N. Maryland Ave. in Glendale, Calif. They even plan to promote their store through old means to reach local customers.
Instead of trendy—but proven—online marketing formulas such as e-mail blasts, they intend to spread the word on their new store through low-technology methods, such as distributing flyers to the people walking past their store, based at The Exchange shopping center in downtown Glendale.
Their methods might find some true believers of the ecommerce revolution scratching their heads. But Misetich said that investing in the old ways of retail might be the only way for e-commerce shop owners to be taken seriously by manufacturers.
“It’s not as prestigious as it once was to just be an ecommerce store,” Misetich said. “There have been too many fly-by-night e-commerce stores getting into the market, and it’s hard for manufacturers to distinguish between them and serious contenders.”
Many fashion vendors have become choosy about their e-commerce stores, Misetich said. These vendors felt cheated after risking their reputations with e-commerce boutiques that did not succeed. Recently, vendors have often preferred to do business with established online boutiques that also have a physical store.
Other e-commerce entrepreneurs have noticed a vendor preference to do business with bricks-and-mortar stores, said Tanya Zilinskas, owner and buyer of San Francisco–based e-boutique Maneater Threads.
“People still have a fear of the unknown with e-commerce,” Zilinskas said. Bricks-and-mortar stores may look more reliable to vendors, since it takes such a great effort to raise funds to afford a lease and to negotiate with city bureaucracies, she explained. On the other hand, e-commerce starts off as easy as building a Web site.
Now that Hotter Than Hollywood has a physical address, the owners found themselves dealing with another thorny issue that bedevils many traditional retailers—exclusivity.
They chose to move to Glendale from Los Angeles because few Glendale stores carried their contemporary and premium-denim lines such as Lotta Stenson, Ed Hardy and 575 Jeans. The competition for such labels was much heavier in Los Angeles.
Rent in Glendale is also cheap compared to Los Angeles. Shashy and Misetich pay $1.50 per square foot for retail space in Glendale, whereas space on the premiumstretches of retail hotspots such as Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles can go beyond $17 per square foot.
Hotter Than Hollywood plans to open more physical stores in the future. But Shashy and Misetich haven’t forsaken e-commerce. “The online store will continue to be our main focus. The market is bigger, and you reach more people,” Shashy said. “It will give us time to establish the physical store.” —Andrew Asch
