California Apparel News

The boom-and-bust cycles of running a store are challenging for anyone, but it was driving the owners of the Parke & Ronen store in Los Angeles crazy.

The Parke & Ronen boutique, located at 8012½ Melrose Ave., was crowded during spring, summer and the winter holiday retail season. The store was typically empty during the first quarter of the year and the time between Labor Day and Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which is the traditional start of the winter holiday retail season.

The label’s co-founder Ronen Jehezkel didn’t want to abandon the New York–headquartered label’s Los Angeles address, which it had been running since 2008, yet he also needed to cut costs.

He and label partner Parke Lutter came up with a novel idea. Close the boutique during the down times, open it during the peak seasons. The schedule is similar to some boutiques in resort areas, yet the 1,200-square-foot Parke & Ronen bricks-and-mortar boutique will still serve a bottom line when it is closed to the public. A 9-by-12-foot billboard advertising Parke & Ronen gear was installed in the main store window, which directs consumers to the label’s website www.parkeandronen.com. Jehezkel said the billboard, which changes every month, was responsible for boosting e-commerce sales 30 percent in the West Hollywood, Calif., zip codes of 90046 and 90069.

The label is ready to reopen its store on March 15 after hibernating since Dec. 22. With balmy spring weather also making a return to Los Angeles, Jehezkel forecasts that people will be seeking Parke & Ronen’s men’s fashion swimwear and the contemporary menswear. Label aficionados also will be treated to exclusive styles that will only be sold at the store, as well as a new look to the store, which includes walls painted in a light-blue “Greek Sea” color.

The label’s owners caught a lucky break when staffing the Melrose store. They expected to hire a new staff, but the boutique’s manager, Grace Staeheli, chose to take a three-month vacation to Australia and will return to the Melrose boutique when it reopens.

The Parke & Ronen label also runs a New York boutique that is open year-round, and the brand’s styles are sold in the e-commerce and physical shops of high-profile retailers such as Barneys New York, Bloomingdale’s, LASC and Nordstrom.

Jehezkel said that his Melrose boutique pays off in more than revenue. “It is a perfect shop for editorial,” he said. “Los Angeles is the fashion capital of the West Coast. It also is opening us to a great international opportunity. There are a lot of tourists here. It’s why we work hard to keep Los Angeles. It is a great way for us to explore international markets.”

Keeping the lights on in a store seasonally is not without precedent. However, it remains unorthodox in areas where population does not plummet during specific seasons, said Bernard G. Jacobs, a stylist with a focus on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Retailers typically take great lengths to keep their bricks-and-mortar stores open, he said. If stores are moving, even down the street, retailers will pay for billboards to announce the news. Otherwise they run the risk of people thinking that they are closing.

“Even if they are losing business, they’ll keep their stores open,” Jacobs said of physical shops, which typically serve two purposes: to sell product and to brand the label or boutique.

Parke & Ronen’s pop-up retail will go farther than Melrose. On the weekend of

Aug. 15, the label will open a pop-up shop in Fire Island, a beach and resort area just outside of New York City, said Lindsay Siwiec, a Parke & Ronen representative. The label will also continue its Melrose experiment. The building where the store is located is up for sale, but it will not affect the lease, Siwiec said.

The Los Angeles Parke & Ronen shop is located close to the intersection of Melrose and Fairfax avenues, and the block has been a fashion street for the past decade. But it suffered during the Great Recession, when many stores closed. Sometimes, more than 10 empty storefronts lined the street during the tough times during and after the recession. However, the neighborhood has experienced a revival in the past 18 months. The Moods of Norway brand moved its boutique to 7964 Melrose in 2013, and hipster jewelry store The Great Frog moved to 7955 Melrose in February.

The neighborhood continues to be the address for high-profile stores for brands such as Adidas, G-Star, New Era, Tarina Tarantino and Tokidoki. Pioneering store Fred Segal Melrose is located a few blocks west.