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After Charting Course With New Tech, Cute Booty Lounge Tries Bricks-and-Mortar

If there’s a new way to spread a message about fashion or develop a new sales channel, Kelly Nishimoto has been in the vanguard.

In 2008, Nishimoto shifted all sales of her lifestyle-and-active brand Cute Booty Lounge to e-commerce, much of it sold on her direct-to-consumer channel, cutebooty.com. A few years later, she started communicating to her customers primarily through social media. And she was a host of TLC channel’s bridal-dress makeover show “Something Borrowed, Something New” from 2011 to 2014.

The inspiration for Cute Booty Lounge started in 2003. Nishimoto was designing her now-defunct, self-named Kelly Nishimoto line. She was shopping for leggings and sweatpants, but everything she tried on seemed to flatten curves rather than accentuate them. To experiment, she took a pair of sweats and added a piece of elastic on the back seam. The elastic gave more room for curves. She later experimented with placing scrunchy pockets around the back seam of her leggings. These details accentuated the curves even more.

Nishimoto liked what she saw, but she didn’t know if anyone else would. Her sweatpants remained at the back of a closet for a year. One day, she was in a rush to drive to the gym and she put on the sweatpants she had ignored. During her training session, she got a lot of compliments from women who asked her where she had purchased her sweats.

She made more sweatpants for herself in different colors. She was getting enough interest where she was confident in taking a risk on developing some activewear styles. Adding a new feature, Nishimoto designed a rounded pocket placed at the bottom of the pant seat. She said that it gives the illusion of a more toned bottom. “There’s nothing lifting it up or pushing it up,” she said. “It’s just a strategically placed pocket.”

During a 2005 Mercedes Benz Los Angeles Fashion Week runway show for the Kelly Nishimoto brand, she introduced the active styles with ruched pockets and a curvy silhouette. Sales for the activewear pieces began to outpace her contemporary line. When a partnership with an investor for the Kelly Nishimoto line was not renewed, she chose to focus on activewear styles and call the effort Cute Booty Lounge.

For her next move, Nishimoto is making the counterintuitive choice to open a bricks-and-mortar store in a mall. The Los Angeles–headquartered Nishimoto is scheduled to open a 3,500-square-foot shop, which also will be called Cute Booty Lounge, on Nov. 7. It will be located at the Westfield Topanga mall in Los Angeles’ Canoga Park section.

“Most people are not opening retail stores,” she conceded about a market where physical retail remains important but has faced declining numbers.

But her business partner and significant other, Anthony Harris, suggested that the brand develop a flagship that would support social media. The brand will make content for its digital sites at the shop. Social-media influencers will be invited in to create content too.

“It’s an experience for customers,” she said of the shop. “We don’t want people to just walk in and then leave with clothes. We want to provide a Cute Booty experience. It’s not just for us. It’s for the social-media influencers. They can pass along content to their followers.”

The upcoming Cute Booty Lounge store will be located in a space across from a Louis Vuitton shop and a Jimmy Choo boutique. “We’re rolling into a luxury section,” she said of the new space. “To me we’re the rebels moving into the luxury-goods area.”

Along with frequently scouting new trends and technology, Nishimoto hopes to provide an alternative. With her current project, the moniker Cute Booty Lounge was meant to make people smile, make a statement and offer some truth in advertising.

“One of the things I hated about fashion is that people took it too seriously,” she said. “They looked down on people who did not design like them. I told myself that when I have my own line I would always keep it fun, and I want to use real women for fit models. I always try to use a curvier girl. On social media and in stores, you want to have images that you can relate to.”

Cute Booty Lounge employs 19 staffers and is made in Los Angeles. Nishimoto is the sole owner and creative director. She and her staff design prints for the line, which include florals, camos, animal prints and houndstooth with other looks available in solids.

Pieces are often assigned humorous names, such as a camouflage legging called Love Is a Battlefield. A legging with a floral pattern is dubbed A Rose I Suppose. The line also makes sports bras, sleepwear, thongs, jumpsuits and dresses. Styles are made in an extended size range that spans from XXS to XXXL. For the holidays, the line will introduce curvy sizes that feature clothes with more room for women with larger busts and hips and small waists.

Retail price points range from $49 for a basic lifestyle legging with no scrunchy pockets to $149 for elevated leggings and $200 for jumpsuits and dresses.