Savvy Lets These Buyers Beware of Fashion Duds

It’s show-and-tell at Clothestime’s headquarters, and Barbara O’Malley is standing before her peers holding a pair of underwear.

“We’ve had a record-breaking week in panties,” O’Malley tells the clothing buyers who have assembled around a long green marble table.

There are accolades and laughter. Beneath the jovial atmosphere, however, lies an anxious awareness of what’s at stake. Buyers such as O’Malley, who picks accessories for Clothestime, purchase garments by the thousands for the chain’s 400-plus stores. Nobody wants to be stuck with a dud.

Buying for the moderately priced young women’s clothing stores means predicting what fickle junior customers will want to wear months in advance. Show-and-tells, held every other week, allow Clothestime’s nine buyers to “identify any new trends and tell us when something is slowing down so we pull the whole store together and remain tight,” says Danette Palazzolo, sourcing coordinator among the Clothestime buyers.

The buyers met recently to forecast back-to-school trends and see how items in the stores were moving.

One by one, each buyer stands and points to garments hanging on the walls like so much laundry. One glance at the wall illustrates the direction of juniors’ fashion: tight leggings, big shirts and short, A-line dresses in purple, turquoise and other bright colors or black and white polka dots.

Lauri Hamer, a buyer, begins by showing off a line of black and white trapeze dresses in checks and polka dots.

“Long legs over a short body is a very important trend. The whole category is just on fire,” she says.

She turns to a line of white peasant blouses. They’ve done so well for summer, she’ll order ones with long sleeves for the fall.

“They’re blowing out,” she says.

Hamer holds up a baseball-style jacket made from a collage of black and white polka-dot fabrics.

“We think baseball jackets will be a key category for back-to-school,” she says.

Ray DeAngelo, chief executive officer and co-founder of Clothestime, continually presses his buyers for details.

“How are sheers doing for back-to-school? Do you believe in them?” he asks Hamer, when she turns to a collection of blouses with black chiffon sleeves.

“Definitely,” she responds.

Color is almost an obsession for the buyers.

“You can take an item in the wrong color and it will be half the seller it would have been in another color,” DeAngelo says.

Comments about color can be heard throughout the meeting.

“Jade has slowed down and navy I’m dead with,” complains one buyer.

Buyers have to be conscious of the bottom line. When they talk fashion, they tend to sound like stockbrokers discussing the market.

“We really feel bullish about shorts, even for school. Girls will be wearing them with opaque tights,” says Ray Greico, buyer of woven bottoms--shorts and pants.

A frequently heard question from DeAngelo is how much an item costs at competitors’ stores.

“What’s The Gap’s price on that?” he asks Greico of a pair of denim shorts. Clothestime tries to keep the price of its merchandise 25% below that of department stores.

When Hamer shows rayon blazers in bright colors, she automatically offers a price comparison.

“Ours is $24.99. The cheapest I could find (at any competitor’s) is $38,” she says.

Clothestime buyers are especially cost-conscious because they are shopping for customers who typically have a limited clothing budget.

“I see our customer as a new graduate starting her first career. She doesn’t have a lot of money. She doesn’t have $100 to spend on a jacket,” Hamer says. “She’s a wear-now type of customer who’s not looking for investment dressing.”

While customers are trendy, they’re not on the cutting edge of fashion.

“If patterns get too wild, our customers get cautious,” Hamer says during show-and-tell.

Buyers keep a close watch on styles to satisfy their trend-conscious clientele. They shop designer showrooms at the California Mart in Los Angeles, study fashion publications such as Seventeen and Vogue, visit the New York showrooms, go shopping in Europe and watch MTV, according to Hamer.

“We’re media victims,” Palazzolo says. The juniors market is strongly influenced by Madonna, Janet Jackson and other women in the media.

Buyers also look at what’s selling at more fashion-forward stores like Barney’s New York.

“It will happen there first,” Hamer says. “We’ll get an idea and interpret it for our more moderate market.”

Even high-priced couture eventually trickles down to their market.

“Chanel might have a beautiful plaid suit. We might see how we can translate it. Obviously we can’t reproduce it stitch for stitch. But we can use, say, the bright plaid” idea for a lower-priced piece, Palazzolo says.

As a precaution, new styles are tested in 30 to 40 of their stores, Hamer says.

Despite the extensive research on silhouettes and color, nothing’s for certain in the volatile juniors market.

“You never really know,” Palazzolo says. “You just leave yourself liquid and you chase. It’s like yellow for spring. There was nothing to indicate yellow would be big, so we chased it.”

The buyers receive sales reports every Monday that show how every item in the stores is doing. Some garments, such as A-line trapeze tops and baby doll dresses, are surprise hits.

“I’d already heard (trapeze tops) were important in Europe, otherwise I never would have tested it. It tested great,” Hamer says. “Now you see it everywhere. It’s a big item in the juniors market.”

Other pieces that look like sure bets can mysteriously flop. Camp shirts were selling so well in spring the company reordered them in huge numbers.

“They dropped dead at inventory peak,” Hamer says.

She worries she’ll make a wrong choice “all the time.”

“Trends come and go so quickly and we’re buying in big quantities,” she says. “It’s a matter of keeping on top of what’s selling and what isn’t. Just because it’s selling now doesn’t mean it will sell next month.”