Suburban Outfitters

Indie retailer brings fashion to Main Street

SANTA ROSA, Calif.—An hour north of San Francisco, tucked amid the vineyard- lined hills of Sonoma County, resides Santa Rosa, Calif.: population 155,000. The city’s agricultural roots run deep, but a pair of bold young retailers has found a solid market for forward fashions in this family-oriented suburb.

Ruana Scott and Joe Davidson run Punch, located on Santa Rosa’s century- old main drag, Fourth Street. In a market dominated by big retailers and high-end boutiques catering to affluent older shoppers, Scott and Davidson have carved a niche for themselves by offering young consumers the kind of hip brands usually only found in the urban jungle.

These include Seven for All Mankind, Juicy Couture, Paper Denim & Cloth, Da-Nang, C&C California and Citizens for Humanity. Such brands are a big part of the store’s success, Scott said.

“My bread-and-butter is jeans, T-shirts and Juicy suits,” she said.

While jeans and T-shirts can be found anywhere, she explained shoppers are “looking for the brand.” Scott also benefits from a coolness factor locals have bestowed on the store.

“They want to say they got it [at Punch],” she said.

Scott, who previously managed actors in New York, opened the store three years ago. It is her second Punch location; the original launched in 1997 in the smaller, neighboring town of Sebastopol, Calif. The flagship Santa Rosa store encompasses 1,700 square feet. Davidson’s separately owned Punch for Men in the upstairs loft fills about 300 square feet.

While the duo answers the needs of hip suburbanites who previously had to endure a long trek to San Francisco in search of fashion, many shoppers have never heard of the labels Punch carries. Locals accustomed to shopping at chain stores can be befuddled at the prospect of paying $150 for jeans by an unknown brand. This requires Scott and Davidson to tactfully educate consumers. And while justifying the higher price tag with quality is one thing, justifying the intangible notion of hipness is quite another.

Scott said there’s a fine line between educating her customers about cool brands and making them feel out-of-touch and ignorant.

“Sometimes you may offend somebody, depending on their security level when it comes to fashion,” she admitted.

Often, she will show magazine clips of celebrities wearing a certain brand as evidence of the brand’s coolness factor.

Previously, Scott bought her lines at the MAGIC International and Western Shoe Association trade shows, but she now goes exclusively to Los Angeles Market Week.

“All the really hip lines now seem to be in L.A.,” she noted.

She buys items in batches of four to eight.

Scott finds suburban shoppers are willing to be fashion-forward as long as the clothing is both comfortable and casual.

“They’ll wear the casual side of a line but not the dressier side,” she said.

Eight months ago, Joe Davidson opened Punch for Men. Davidson said the local guys want to be fashionable but they just don’t know anything beyond what is available at the local shopping mall. And, he said, the fashion-conscious fellas “are not going to commute two hours to San Francisco and pay for parking and lunch just to get a shirt.”

Davidson also shops for lines in Los Angeles and carries Ben Sherman, Paul Frank, Von Dutch, Seven and Paper Denim & Cloth. He chose to carry primarily lines he knew and had a personal affinity for.

“I consider this my closet that I’ve opened up to Santa Rosa,” he said.

Davidson, who formerly worked as a middleman for vintage-clothing dealers, said he takes a low-key sales approach.

“You don’t want to bombard people with information as soon as they walk through the door and alienate them, but you also want to let them know what they’re looking at,” he said. “If I can get guys to stop and try stuff on, then they really start getting into it.”

Davidson does not think his pool of potential customers is limited to a small portion of the local population. Rather, he believes his store could appeal to all the guys in town.

“I strongly believe I can convert them, and I believe they want to [be converted],” he said.

Back on the women’s side, it takes time for a new item or label to catch on, and Scott has to plan her buying with a six-month lag time.

“I’ll see something I know is going to be really hot, and I’ll have to wait six months before I buy it,” she said. “You want to be the first one to have it, but you know it’ll just sit there.”

The half-year delay allows for the reverberation of media exposure to finally reach Sonoma County. Then when Scott finally gets a new item, customers will have at least some familiarity with it.

Although Punch’s sales have grown year after year, Scott does not see herself on a mission to enlighten the ignorant masses.

“I don’t feel like a crusader,” she said. “I’ve just provided something that people were ready for.”