California Apparel News

With new offices, new staff and new merchandise, Wet Seal put its rebound on display on March 16.

The once-prominent mall retailer emerged from bankruptcy in fall 2015. Since then, Melanie Cox, Wet Seal’s chief executive officer, has been putting together the ingredients that she believes will power a turnaround for the 170-store chain.

The first looks of Spring/Summer 2016 from Wet Seal’s new team started appearing in the retailer’s stores in early March. The new looks are California-casual but not surf, Cox said. “Our goal was to quickly return to the original DNA of the brand, something that had been lost in recent years,” Cox said to a presentation for bloggers. “Wet Seal was one of the first retail brands that captured that easy, California chic and brought it to the national retail landscape.”

Wet Seal’s problems started when the company stopped making clothes with a California inspiration. “Over time they lost touch with the customer,” Cox said of former management. “They lost the ability to provide the customer with what she wanted, and what was once a nimble and fast retail machine had slowed down to a very slow-to-react business model. We’ve changed that.”

Wet Seal’s new direction has come with great speed. Crucial executives such as Annette Hickey, vice president of apparel, tops and bottoms, joined the company Feb. 1. Kara Stangl joined last August as vice president of accessories.

On Feb. 20, the company moved into new digs in an office park in Irvine, Calif.—a less than five-minute drive from its store at the Irvine Spectrum mall. It moved out of its longtime compound with a distribution center in Foothill Ranch, Calif., when the building’s lease expired.

An e-commerce redesign and logos, including a secondary logo that referred to the store as “WS,” also were introduced. Cox said that a new look for Wet Seal shops would be unveiled in the first quarter of 2017. But design refreshes for the retailer’s fleet have appeared recently.

Other design focuses will include plus-size styles, which are currently only available online. “The tenets of our core values are reflected in our product offering, which is accessible and inclusive fashion. We will reintroduce ourselves to the market in new, fun, engaging and fashionable ways through all of our marketing efforts. We are about inclusivity, not exclusivity, and feel that our customer will start to feel that across all our various brand touch-points,” said Angelo D’Agostino, the retailer’s vice president of brand marketing.

Wet Seal’s main focus is outfitting women ages 17 to 25 and giving them affordable, stylish clothes, Cox said. “‘Affordable’ doesn’t have to mean ‘cheap,’” Cox said during the presentation. “We have worked hard on affordable. We have worked hard on making comfortable clothes.”

For the goals in its near future, Cox hopes to strengthen the retailer’s gains.

“We will see steady growth in total penetration of sales in e-commerce, hopefully internationally. Our [bricks-and-mortar] stores will grow, and we will open new locations next year.”

The market has generally been weak for retailers serving teens. Tilly’s Inc., also headquartered in Irvine, reported on March 16 a same-store-sales decline of 0.9 percent for the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2015 year. Same-store sales declined 9.5 percent for Zumiez Inc., based in Washington state, for the fourth quarter of its 2015 fiscal year. The performance had beaten Wall Street estimates, said Liz Pierce of Brean Capital in a March 11 retail note.

For a long time, teen retailers have been in sharp competition with teens’ fascination with smart devices. “Gadgets seem to dominate people’s lifestyles,” Pierce said. Paying bills for smartphone use can eat away at other diversionary spending.

“Also hampering the market, many retailers also complain about lack of newness in styles,” Pierce said. “Vendors say that there are new things happening out there, denim is coming back in all different silhouettes, but it takes a while for them to start resonating.”

During the blogger presentation, Wet Seal staff displayed installations of the brand’s Spring/Summer 2016 looks. Hickey said that styles will be feminine and modern with a touch of bohemian. The customer is sensitive to value and mixes items from high-end and low-end brands. “She wants to look put-together.”

Looks include fashion basics such as T-shirts, the bottoms style “soft shorts” and slouchy V-neck tops.

“The dresses and shirts business continue to be effortless,” Hickey said. “They resonate with the customer now.”