Fashion Comes to Volleyball With Stylish Mossimo Designs

If a sport becomes popular, can its fashion be far behind?

Volleyball apparel is no exception, with the sport a hot act on Southern California’s beaches. Just as surfing, skateboarding and snow-boarding all have created their own apparel, so has volleyball.

Since the 1984 Olympics--when the U.S. men took the gold medal--volleyball has grown into a multimillion-dollar industry, with corporate sponsors, a 23-tournament professional circuit and a select handful of athletes who next year could earn more than President Bush.

Volleyball’s popularity has set up the industry’s Gucci: Mossimo, with its line of volley shorts and coordinating T-shirts, mock turtlenecks and accessories tailored to the needs and tastes of the growing ranks of volleyball aficionados.

The success of 3-year-old Mossimo Sport Inc. parallels the emerging volleyball apparel industry, where sales figures these days are soaring higher than the players in the latest sport of choice among California’s beach set.

In the last five years, more than 23 million enthusiasts have spilled onto the courts, up from 14 million just five years ago, according to Volleyball Monthly, an industry-spawned magazine. At the same time, prize money now tops $2 million--an astronomical increase from $5,000 a dozen years ago.

The volleyball apparel business is dominated by a handful of small, entrepreneurial Southern California companies. Mossimo of Irvine--headed by Mossimo Giannulli--leads the pack when it comes to style, if not sales.

The Mossimo line “is not just your basic, dumb-dumb stuff. It’s more fashionable, (and) there’s a little more thought in designing it,” said Tom Noble, manager and buyer for Newport Surf & Sport, a surf wear shop where Mossimo’s is the No. 1 selling volleyball apparel.

The company first won notice two years ago when Giannulli, now 26, took a gamble by introducing volley shorts in Day-Glo lime, pink, yellow and orange. The shorts--which retail for $32 to $36--came along at a time when the surf wear market was flooded with garment-washed treatments and wild prints.

At the same time, Giannulli plastered the seats with a distinctive, gigantic “M” signature logo in black so there was no mistaking the label.

The result was $1.3 million in sales in 1988--which is expected to swell to $5.1 million by the end of this year, Giannulli said.

The Mossimo story parallels that of many others in the $1-billion active-wear industry. The company was founded on a shoestring by Giannulli, 26, a college dropout who started in the rag trade at USC. As a college student, Giannulli learned that selling T-shirts to students can be very profitable.

After an ill-fated attempt to work with the now-defunct Bagit, Giannulli--who plays amateur volleyball--saw a need and figured he was the one to fill it. “The volley kid is a little older and wanted things a little cleaner--without the crazy . . . surf-Nazi styles,” he said.

So in February, 1986, he began selling shorts out of his Balboa Island garage. Through the Yellow Pages, he found a seamstress. That first year, with the help of a $100,000 loan co-signed by Giannulli’s father--Mossimo sold about 10,000 pairs of its single style of three-panel shorts.

But business really did not perk up until Mossimo introduced the fluorescent shorts. Since then, business has been brisk, particularly among men 15 to 30 years old and young women, who buy as much as 25% of the company’s line, Giannulli said.

From first-year sales of roughly 200 shorts per month, Mossimo now sells up to 20,000 pairs of volley and walk shorts. Next year, Giannulli estimates that the company will sell 600,000 shorts.

Rivals in the fiercely competitive active-wear industry wonder whether Mossimo will come up with another big hit that will parallel the fluorescent shorts. “I don’t know how commercial he is,” said one major manufacturer, who noted that the company has not scored as high with a black-and-white cow print and a smile-face print.

Giannulli, however, said lines using both of those limited fabrics quickly sold out. And to make sure Mossimo has staying power, the line has been broadened to include Supplex sweat outfits, houndstooth and glen plaid shorts and pants, fleece items and such accessories as duffel bags, beach sandals and backpacks. Mossimo plans to break into womens’ swimwear next summer; the company is talking about a womens’ sportswear line within two years after that.