Wet Seal Proud to Be Trendy : Irvine-Based Clothing Chain Has Grown From One Store to 93 by Catering to Teens’ Whims, Company Officials Say

Every morning on her way to work, Sharon Hughes slows her car as she drives by El Toro High School to see what the girls are wearing to class.

“I’m obsessed. I don’t even notice I’m driving,” Hughes says.

As merchandise manager for Wet Seal, the retail clothing chain that caters to young women, Hughes is constantly on the lookout for fashion trends.

Staying current, staying topical, has helped make Wet Seal a success in the competitive juniors market. The Irvine-based company, which began 30 years ago as a small swimwear store on Balboa Island (hence the name), now has 93 clothing stores . . . and counting. In Southern California, Wet Seals are everywhere--no mall in Orange County is without one.

For Wet Seal, keeping on top of the constantly changing tastes of its customers is a never-ending challenge. As company president Ken Chilvers says, the graveyard is full of juniors’ chains that “fell in love with themselves.”

To survive and multiply, Wet Seal anticipates what its young, 14- to 40-year-old customer wants to wear, then moves the clothes into the stores with incredible speed.

Hughes helps lead Wet Seal’s team of fashion buyers in choosing four or five dominant looks and colors for each season.

It’s risky business.

Teen-age customers are notoriously fickle. Their tastes change almost daily.

“When something drops dead, it drops dead,” says Jean Heller, associate general merchandise manager for Wet Seal. “Some styles could have an eight-week shelf life, some have a two-week shelf life.”

It’s as if all the teen-agers in America wake up one morning and decide they hate purple or stripes.

“The best example was the day neon dropped dead,” Heller says.

Neon’s demise was so sudden, the buyers could have marked it on their calendars. Virtually overnight Wet Seal found it could not move its hot pink and lime green merchandise--even when it was marked on sale.

“Neon was so identifiable,” Hughes says. “It just stayed on the racks.”

Even if an item does well, it won’t come back to Wet Seal.

“Freshness is the key,” Chilvers says.

To stay fresh, he encourages his staff to get out of the office and go places where trends are being established. The buyers study the styles everywhere--in malls, dance clubs, movie theaters or the streets of Los Angeles.

“It’s a way of life no matter where you are,” Hughes says.

Movies, concerts and MTV play a big role in the way young women dress, so the buyers watch the media with an eye for what will be hot. The movie “Dirty Dancing,” for instance, inspired a passion for cutoff jeans.

When Heller attended a recent Go-Go’s concert and saw lead singer Belinda Carlisle wearing an oversize shirt and leggings, she breathed a sigh of relief: It’s a look Wet Seal is betting will be a hit.

As of mid-December, buyers were still choosing clothes to sell in January. Wet Seal allows just 60 days to lapse from the time merchandise is ordered to the time it’s hanging on store racks.

“I remember the days when you’d buy six months” in advance, Hughes says. Sometimes buyers go from concept to the floor in just two weeks.

“It’s a wear-it-now situation,” she says. “The market changes so fast. And the customer changes hourly.”

Wet Seal relies on mostly U.S. manufacturers for merchandise, which reduces delivery time. The company also makes 20% to 30% of its own private label clothing to “make us stand apart and make us be first,” Heller says.

At the Irvine headquarters, designers have a computer that quickly shows them how a design group will look in a different color scheme or print.

“It’s another way we keep ahead,” Heller says. They don’t have to wait for a designer to paint a new set of drawings, a process that can take days or even weeks.

Still, Wet Seal has avoided selling all private label merchandise as some juniors’ retailers have done.

“We should never feel we can provide the inspiration for a whole store full of merchandise,” Chilvers says. “Then you create a private label animal you have to feed.”

Chilvers spends no money on advertising. He maintains that the stores’ contemporary look and high-energy atmosphere will pull in shoppers.

He invests in the store’s decor, including expensive sound systems and video walls that perpetually play music videos.

“If customers are entertained, they’ll stay longer,” he reasons.

At the Mission Viejo store, his approach appeared to be working.

“The music gets me hyped up,” says Carole Barendt, a 36-year-old Dana Point resident shopping with her 10-year-old daughter Melany.

Against the store’s contemporary black and white furnishings, clothes are arranged by color and group, not by size and commodity.

“It used to be you’d go into a store and it would be: ‘This is our pant section,’ with doughnuts separating the sizes,” Chilvers says. “We thought that’s not how most people picture clothes. They want to know ‘How do I wear this thing hanging here?’ So we threw away all of the doughnuts and put tops and bottoms together.”

The walls of the store are decked from floor to ceiling in coordinated outfits. One area is devoted to peach and powder blue floral prints, another to navy and white stripes, another to black.

“If I don’t like a certain color, I just avoid that whole section,” Barendt says.

Michele Scanlon, 21, of Anaheim prefers to have the store do the fashion coordinating, right down to the matching earrings.

“You don’t have to do it yourself,” she says.

Not all of Wet Seal’s customers are in their teens and 20s. On a recent afternoon Wet Seal attracted many young mothers and a few grandmothers. One gray-haired woman confessed that she shops for herself as well as her granddaughters at Wet Seal.

“I keep coming back,” she says. “It’s mostly for young people but they have some things that are in good taste for any age.”

With disappointing holiday sales, Chilvers has no reason to relax.

“There’s no guarantee you’ll be the hot guy next week,” he says.