California Apparel News

For most of his two decades in retail, Fred Levine said he thought building a men’s clothing business would be a mistake. It was simply too different from the women’s clothing market that had brought success to M.Fredric, his family-owned chain of 19 stores based in Agoura Hills, Calif.

Yet, this year, Levine plans to build a men’s retail division. Levine said he did not have a change of heart—rather, the world around him changed.

“I wouldn’t have been able to pull this off five years ago,” Levine said of his M.Fredric Man stores. “But the mainstream guy wants to wear an Ed Hardy T-shirt and True Religion jeans.”

Levine and his partners—his wife, Lisa, and his sister, Mardi Fox—opened their first M.Fredric Man store in June at The Promenade at Westlake shopping center in Westlake Village, Calif., 45 minutes north of downtown Los Angeles.

Initially, they had opened a lingerie and sleepwear store at Westlake Village, but they found they could make the same sales volume or higher if they dedicated a lingerie and sleepwear space inside their women’s store, M.Fredric, a couple of storefronts down. Their change of plans left them with 840 square feet of space at a premium shopping center—and a will to experiment.

Most veteran M.Fredric vendors—including Raw 7, Hard Tail and Silver Jeans—had already launched or expanded their men’s fashion lines. So Levine, keeping his expectations low, ordered just enough men’s fashions to fill up the modest space. He reported being shocked; he sold out of much of his stock in three days.

“This is one of the toughest places to open,” said the easygoing Levine, wearing flip-flop sandals and a baseball cap bearing The Beatles logo. “This is the ’burbs. Imagine what I can do in a city center.”

Levine and his partners plan to build two more men’s stores in Southern California: a 1,000-square-foot store in Studio City in October and a 1,600-square-foot store in Marina del Rey in November. He projected he will earn $2,000 per square foot at the new stores.

Growing men’s sector

Levine’s plans to build a men’s division were rooted in his gut feelings and the success of the Westlake Village store. He did no research on men’s buying habits before experimenting with menswear.

But researchers are finding that men are spending more money on fashions. According to the Port Washington, N.Y.–based market research company NPD Fashionworld, men spent $49.4 billion on clothes in 2004, compared with $46.9 billion in 2003. Women spent $94.5 billion on clothes in 2004, compared with $90.1 billion in 2003.

Another surprise for Levine was that his new customers are not buying basic clothes but are spending $40 to $500 on fashions with more embroidery and artdriven details. He said he believes the market should grow because there are few specialty boutique chains serving men’s fashions.

Among the other retailers that have opened men’s fashion stores in the past couple of years is Lisa Kline Men, located on Los Angeles’ Robertson Boulevard and in Malibu, Calif.

Sam Ben Avraham, owner of the Project Global Trade Show, said traditional men’s retailers have embraced more fashion since the premium denim lines started offering more clothing to men. “Stores are moving from being very traditional, and the consumer is much more demanding than they used to be,” he said. But the differences between men’s and women’s retailing are still great, Ben Avraham said. “Men’s stores don’t experience the sharp turns in women’s retailing. It’s been a lot more tough [in men’s retailing], and there’s a lot more opportunity,” he said.

The Project show in New York, held in July, specializes in men’s clothing. Ben Avraham also owns contemporary boutique Atrium in New York.

M.Fredric’s expansion into men’s retailing was self-financed, mostly through savings from the company’s tightly controlled inventory management. Likewise, M.Fredric created the interior design in house. The warehouse team constructed the store’s fixtures, and Levine and his company designed the rustic look of the store. The blond wood floor planks and fixtures are scraps from old houses that had been torn down.

Levine said that although he has high hopes for his burgeoning men’s retail unit, he still believes it is a young market that is bound to throw retailers some curveballs. “I think I stuck my neck out. I’ll know soon if I was right,” he said.