California Apparel News

When Guddi Bedi and her husband, Baljit, moved into their third-floor California Market Center showroom some 15 years ago, they had to pay $50,000 key money just to garner a coveted spot.

Now the Bedis’ small Krishma Overseas showroom is surrounded by a vast desert of empty spaces as everyone around them is picking up and moving from the B side of the CMC’s third floor to open spots on the A side.

Soon the Bedis will be joining everyone else shifting over to the A building—one of three showroom buildings that make up the CMC complex.

The migration from the B to the A side has been in the works ever since CMC management told showroom owners they would have to vacate by the end of the year because they are planning to reconfigure that area.

Jaime Lee, the CMC’s president, said the third floor will be renovated into show floors for the various market weeks held in the building. In an email, she wrote the area “will be renovated as an expansion for our show floors because 3C next door is consistently sold out during Majors [Market], in particular, and the success of our men’s floor on 4B and our subsequent partnership with LA Men’s Market make the floor below a natural expansion area during [LA] Fashion Market.”

The CMC is also kicking off a 30-day intensive study with consultants to develop plans to update and redo the building’s exterior, main lobby and common areas.

The Bedis and three other showrooms (Betty Bottom Showroom, Musani Couture and Robert Friedman) are the only ones left on the CMC’s B side, but, by December or January, the four remaining showrooms will join their former neighbors on the A side once their new spaces are built.

For many of these longstanding showroom owners, the thought of moving was traumatic. It was like being told the government was declaring eminent domain on your residential property to build a new freeway and you had to leave.

But with most of the showrooms now relocated to their new spaces, the result is a new vibrancy and energy to an area that is showing there is force in numbers.

During the last Los Angeles Fashion Market in October, the new and old showroom owners on the A side’s third floor banded together and offered buyers Prosecco and cupcakes in the afternoon to inject a festive air to the four-day event, which highlighted fashions for the Spring 2016 season.

Fern Liberson, whose showroom has been on the A side’s third floor for many years, said the afternoon treats were very popular with buyers and lifted everyone’s spirits.

“We are all working together cohesively,” said Sharon Koshet, whose Sharon Koshet Sales showroom was on the B side for 16 years. She moved over just days before the last fashion market opened. “This has been like a shot in the arm.”

With a new working area, Koshet decided to reconfigure her space into two separate showrooms across the hall from each other. One showroom is dedicated to updated misses clothing, and the other showroom has lines geared for the young contemporary and juniors market so buyers aren’t overwhelmed with seeing too much merchandise they wouldn’t normally buy. “It’s better for the buyers,” Koshet noted.

The showroom consolidation on the A side is also a win-win situation for store buyers, who are happier they don’t have to wander from one side of the massive CMC building to the other hunting for showrooms.

If you build it, they will come

The energy found on the third floor is also enticing showrooms from other floors and buildings.

Recently, Jim Rowley and his wife, Ute Wegmann, moved their Jim & Ute Associates accessories showroom from the A building’s 10th floor to the third floor after seeing more vacancies pop up around them.

“Buyers would say, ‘Where is everybody?’” said Rowley, who was on the 10th floor for 25 years.

“We moved down for more exposure,” he explained, noting that store buyers frequenting the third floor to buy new clothing collections are the same category of store buyers that shop his accessories. “We knew it was time to change.”

Another accessories showroom that moved down from the 10th floor recently is Roxstar, which sells jewelry and other items. Cynthia Rodriguez, Roxstar’s owner, said she was on the 10th floor for 25 years but saw it grow increasingly sparse. “I heard so many complaints from buyers,” she noted. “They don’t like to see empty showrooms.”

Lisa Lenchner, sales manager for the Shu Shu Showroom, had been on the seventh floor of the nearby Gerry Building for one year, but buyer traffic was not as brisk as she had hoped. So she decided to join the crowd on the CMC’s newly revved-up third floor. “I saw more customers here on a Sunday morning [during market] than I saw during the entire market at the Gerry,” she said.

She said her CMC rent is about 20 percent higher but is worth it.

Filling the void

Over the years, the CMC’s immense space of 2 million square feet has grown increasingly vacant as the retail industry and showroom business have changed to accommodate e-commerce sites and changing sales strategies.

The C building of the CMC was transformed years ago to gift showrooms, but that didn’t last as many gift sales representatives opted to return to The Reef, formerly known as the LA Mart, which traditionally has been a gift showroom building.

Earlier this year, one of the building’s largest gift showrooms, California Marketing Associates, occupying the entire 13th floor of the C building, closed and moved to the Las Vegas World Market Center.

And next summer, the fashion department of the Otis College of Art and Design is leaving its 38,000-square-foot headquarters after some 20 years in the CMC building to move to the school’s main campus, located near Los Angeles International Airport.