Weaving Into the County’s Luxury Market : Merchandising: TSE Cashmere is opening a South Coast Plaza outlet in hopes that upscale customers will go right to the source.
TSE Cashmere officials knew without a doubt that they had captured a place in the luxury fashion market the day a couple walked into their warehouse after an exhaustive hunt and bought a $550 cashmere sweat shirt.
The couple had been winging across the Pacific on a United Air Lines flight and happened to spy an ad for TSE’s version of the classic gray-hooded sweat shirt in an in-flight magazine.
When they landed, they tried in vain to find a TSE store.
They went to South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, but TSE’s only Southern California store had not yet opened. They finally found the company’s Santa Ana headquarters--an unmarked building in an industrial park. There they bought the sweat shirt right off the shelf.
TSE President Augustine Tse related the story to prove a point: that his line of cashmere fashions for men, women and children is unique and that customers are willing to buy direct from the source.
Though the company has sold its cashmere through upscale retailers for years, TSE (pronounced say ) is branching out.
On Sunday, the company will open its South Coast Plaza store. Last year, TSE established its first two stores, in San Francisco and Palo Alto.
Cashmere is considered one of the world’s most luxurious--and expensive--yarns. It is combed from the fur of goats in the interior of China, then carefully hand-sorted by length and extensively brushed and dyed. The fur of a single goat produces just 4 ounces of yarn after processing. The fur from up to 16 goats may be needed to weave a single sweater.
Tse, a soft-spoken Hong Kong native who looks decidedly younger than 43, said his company’s parent, Cashmere House, wanted to set up its own retail outlets to be able to continue to offer a luxury product at a time when department stores are agitating for lower prices from suppliers.
For Cashmere House, he said, lower prices would have meant lowering quality, which the company refuses to do.
“I don’t want to prostitute any product,” he says.
To emphasize its luxury image, the company is opening its South Coast Plaza store in the mall’s glitter row, amid the designer boutiques on the second floor, near Nordstrom and Bullock’s.
At 600 square feet, the newest TSE Cashmere is about half the size of the Northern California stores, said TSE vice president Lisa Cervantes. But it will carry much of the same cashmere line, with space for silk items made at the company’s factory in Xinjiang province of China--on the edge of the Gobi Desert.
Cervantes said the Orange County store will be a prototype for franchised TSE stores around the nation.
Prices for cashmere items will range from about $250 to $1,900, from sweaters made of the buttery soft, incredibly warm cashmere at the low end, up to mink-trimmed cashmere stoles at the high end.
And despite retail woes around the nation, Tse said, his company’s business remains strong. Cashmere House--the American arm of a joint venture of Hong Kong investors and the Chinese government--expects to sell $15 million worth of garments this year, increasing to $22 million to $25 million in 1991.
Tse said he started in the textile trade in Hong Kong and in 1979 became a partner in the joint venture to build the cashmere and silk factory in China.
The company, which exports up to 840,000 garments a year, quickly grabbed the major share of the U.S. cashmere market, Tse said.
He established Cashmere House to provide private-label goods for upscale retailers. TSE Cashmere is the new retail arm.
The company’s headquarters were established in Orange County, he said, to establish a special identity close to South Coast Plaza and away from the textile district of Los Angeles.
