Metropark Gets New Chief Executive
Metropark, a mall-based fashion-boutique chain geared toward street-savvy young adults, has promoted one of its executives to the top spot.
Renee Bell, the chain’s vice president and general merchandise manager, is stepping into the chief executive office.
Bell will replace Bob Allison, the interim chief executive who has helped direct the 34-store chain since February. Allison will remain on the retailer’s board of directors along with chain founder Orv Madden. Madden founded Hot Topic in 1988. He retired from that youth-oriented retail chain, based in Industry, Calif., in 2000.
Metropark opened its first store at the Glendale Galleria in October 2004. Bell was hired later as general merchandise manager in February 2005. She has previously held general merchandising management positions at the contemporary retail chain Bebe. At Charlotte Russe’s now-defunct Rampage chain of stores, she was vice president of merchandising.
Metropark is on a growth spurt. It plans to open 25 to 30 new stores each year. Its goal is to maintain a fleet of more than 200 stores, Bell said. She characterized her mission as being a leader who makes the company’s recent gains concrete.
“To continue our success, we need to keep moving forward with our current merchandising strategies. All the same, you never can get too comfortable with success,” she said.
Bell lives in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood and does a lot of her trend spotting driving around her hip neighborhood, which is considered a center of Los Angeles’ alternative-rock scene. The neighborhood is the site of the Sunset Junction Street Fair, an annual rock festival.
Metropark’s main customer is a 24-year-old obsessed with premium denim. The store’s top-selling clothing brands are denim labels True Religion and Rock & Republic. Store price points range from $29 for T-shirts to more than $300 for premium denim. —Andrew Asch
