California Apparel News

For the owners of the Casablank streetwear label, business can be a transcontinental road trip.

They wanted to introduce their Montreal-based brand to Los Angeles. So they bought a booth for $2,200 at the Venue trade show, which ran July 8–9 at the Cooper Design Space in downtown Los Angeles.

To make the trip, co-founders Nicolas Bearzatto and Sharif Aina—along with Mathieu Brunet, who does sales for the Canadian brand—took a six-day trip that started in Montreal and wended its way through Denver and Las Vegas before arriving in Los Angeles.

At the end of the show, when many vendors were watching the World Cup’s semi-final match between the Netherlands and Argentina, Bearzatto said they found what they were looking for. “We met people. We wanted to get more exposure,” he said.

The recent run of Venue was the third time the show was produced and the second time it exhibited on the 11th floor of the Cooper Design Space, said Miles Canares, founder of the show for streetwear and emerging labels. Fifty brands exhibited, which was about the same number as last January.

Canares said he picked this particular date for the show because it was the same week as Agenda, one of the leading streetwear shows in the market. He thought more buyers than usual would be in town.

Retailers such as Nasty Gal and Tradition, both of Los Angeles, shopped the show, as well as streetwear boutiques such as Backside in Burbank, Calif., and Crown Roots in Pasadena, Calif.

The great majority of the brands exhibiting were new, but established brandssuch as X -Large of Los Angeles and Bearpaw of Sacramento, Calif., also had booths.

For Tepi Benjamins, brand manager for the 23-year-old X-Large, Venue was the place for commerce and self-expression. It was a great place to meet retailers, and brands could also produce brief demonstrations such as a hip-hop dance show.

For Dana Noh, who does sales for Bearpaw footwear, the show was a means to introduce her brand to emerging retailers. “We knew they weren’t going to write a lot of paper, but it’s about making connections,” she said.

But business was done at the small show. Brian Chan, director for Los Angeles–label Wolf & Man, said 70 percent of his orders were for Immediate deliveries. Others were for Fall.

Terence Harrison, owner of Crown Roots, said business has been hard for independent retailers. He knew some boutiques that were going out of business due to rising rents. However, there were new trends bubbling up in streetwear that were bringing in new customers. Silhouettes such as baseball jerseys and walking shorts have been in style. Patterns such as florals and tie-dye designs have been on their way out, he said.

The tough business environment may have kept some buyers at home, said Jacob Seedman, founder of Shalom CPP, a Santa Cruz, Calif.–based streetwear label. “It was a good show but a little slow. It was not as many buyers as we anticipated. But I plan to do the show again. I believe in its potential,” he said.