California Apparel News

SAN DIEGO—Exhibitors and retailers reported high energy and plenty of newness at the Action Sports Retailer Trade Expo held Sept. 8–10 at the San Diego Convention Center, while blocks away the Agenda trade show grew up into a serious place to do business.

ASR Director Andy Tompkins said this was the biggest show in its 25-year history. There were 435 exhibitors, upwards of 700 brands and more than 18,000 attendees, he said. Last year, there were 407 exhibitors, about 700 brands and 17,500 attendees.

The mix of surf and skate, streetwear, swimwear, contemporary clothing as well as old and new brands filled 154,000 square feet to give buyers a range of options. Diversity in product mix was a key focus of the show.

To expand its offerings, ASR courted crossover brands with a street flavor, such as L-R-G, Live Mechanics, Robedom and Zoo York. The streetwear drew plenty of buyer interest. “Our clientele is lifestyle, urban and skate, so ASR is a good place for us to reach out to wider markets,” said James Germani, general manager of Tribal Streetwear, a San Diego clothing company that returned to ASR this season.

ASR’s GoldBox Mission, a showcase for new and up-and-coming brands, tripled in size since it debuted last year. Buyers shopped the newly redesigned area, which was packed with 36 diverse brands. “GoldBox tends to attract a more fashion-oriented buyer,” Tompkins said.

Los Angeles–based Scrapbook, a contemporary fashion resource, showed pretty dresses and feminine blouses alongside more core brands offering T-shirts and skate sneakers. Ambission of Arroyo Grande, Calif., used GoldBox as a platform to launch hoodies, dresses and denim. The reaction to the line—which features nostalgic prints on a reversible hoodie and stark, skinny denim—was excellent, said Dustin Odbert, the brand’s co-owner. “We saw some important people and got great feedback.”

Returning brands added an “old is new” quality to the show. MCD, originally a division of Gotcha International in the early 1990s, made a splash with buyers and industry veterans after being dead for several years. With funding from Perry Ellis International, which acquired Gotcha last year, MCD relaunched with a Spring 2007 collection of boardshorts, T-shirts, denim and walking shorts.

Original designers Johnny Monson and Jason Arnold have returned to give the brand their signature in-your-face style. “The industry is stagnant,” Monson said. “Everyone seems to be chasing each other’s tails. It’s the perfect time to offer something different from what the big guys are doing.”

The brand’s dirty rocker T-shirts, spare denim and artheavy boardshorts seem to have hit a nerve at the show. “Our plan was to sell the vibe of what we’ve created with the brand. Despite that, virtually every dealer we would have hoped to have come by did, and we received verbal commitments from every one of them. It was a very successful show for us and solidified our belief that MCD is back in a big way,” Arnold said.

Majors and specialty-store buyers roamed the aisles. Exhibitors reported seeing retail representatives from Swell, Active, ZJ Boarding House, Diane’s Beachwear, Zumiez, Federated Department Stores, Virgin Megastores, Val Surf, Pacific Sunwear, Chick’s Sporting Goods and Ron Jon Surf Shop.

Buyers seemed pleased with the show’s swim resources. New juniors bikini brand B., from Torrance, Calif.–based Sunsets Inc., debuted with quirky vintage prints, low-rider bottoms and playful embellishments. The swim line’s designer, Nikol Roberts, who works as a freelance trend forecaster and has designed premium denim, said she wanted to sell the line in skate and surf shops. “That’s where our girl shops,” she said, “so it makes sense for us to show here at ASR.”

Sue Hurley, owner of the Beach Blvd. Swimwear shop in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said the range of swim brands at ASR—from newbies such as B. to established brands including De La Mer and O’Neill—showed innovative product. “There was a lot of new and fresh swimwear,” Hurley said. “It seemed like the swim section grew and got better this time around.” She placed a couple of orders at the show, but she will be cautious when making her final buys later this month. “I have to be very thoughtful,” she said. “It was a hard summer.”

Agenda finds business in street cred

For most of its three-year history, the Agenda trade show has been best known for being a trendsetting outpost of streetlevel cool. Now it also may develop a reputation as a serious business, according to some retailers and vendors. Boutique, skate and art-inspired fashions were sold at the most recent Agenda, Sept. 8–9 at the San Diego Concourse, several blocks away from where ASR was held.

“It feels like a real trade show,” said Charlie Staunton, co-founder of Brown Sound Clothing of Pasadena, Calif. “There were good lines, and it attracted good buyers.”

Until its September 2005 show in San Diego, Agenda seemed to have a rootless feel, because most of its shows were housed in a temporary building with no air conditioning in a city where the temperature can climb into the 90s on a typical summer day.

Agenda President Aaron Levant said the move early this year to the 35,000-square-foot main hall of the Concourse, near San Diego’s Civic Center, gave the January show a more settled, professional milieu, which he felt attracted more retailers.

Show organizers estimated that more than 2,000 attendees shopped at Agenda. They included mall-based retailers such as Pacific Sunwear, MetroPark, Hot Topic, Urban Outfitters, Up Against the Wall and Virgin Megastores. Also shopping Agenda were boutiques such as Costa Mesa, Calif.–based The Closet and Hansen Surfboards of Encinitas, Calif., and e-commerce shops such as Digital Gravel, Karmaloop and The Giant Peach.

With 150 vendors, 33 percent more companies participated in the September show than in January’s. Agenda’s most recent vendors ranged from major companies with a hip quotient such as Adidas to established streetwear/boutique lines including RVCA of Costa Mesa, Calif., and Obey Clothing of Santa Ana, Calif., to new lines such as Custom Industries of Los Angeles and New York–based toy business Kid Robot, which debuted its candy-colored apparel line of hoodies and Tshirts at Agenda.

As with every trade show, some vendors did well, and others complained about slow business. Eric Thomas, the sales chief at RVCA, said his company was slammed with appointments, averaging about two every hour. Trevor Martin, vice-president of sales at Los Angeles hat and accessory company Livity Outernational, estimated that his sales increased 30 percent over Agenda’s September 2005 show. “There’s been a steady build of retail traffic at the shows,” Martin said. “Agenda is serious about getting buyers here, and they delivered.”

But makers of fashion and art-inspired labels often said the pace of the show was slow. Richard Florence of Los Angeles– based Anzevino & Florence said his cut-and-sew label did great business at the Project Global Trade Show in Las Vegas, but Agenda seemed to be the opposite. “I guess you call it exhibiting, but it’s hanging out,” Florence said of Agenda. “I’m debating whether to go to the beach.”

Levant promised that the next Agenda would again be located at the San Diego Concourse, and that it probably would have a similar number of vendors. But he hoped to attract bigger labels to the next show and to increase the crowds of retailers.