THE BOTTOM LINE

How’s this for a special effect? Not content with being one of Hollywood’s largest prop- and set-design companies, Cinnabar recently transformed itself into a designer for another entertainment industry: shopping.

Retail is “a natural crossover” says Jonathan Katz, the 42-year-old founder, CEO and president of Cinnabar, which in 11 years has grown from a garage operation to an $8.5 million-a-year business. Based in the old Hollywood Center on North Las Palmas, Katz and his 100 staffers still churn out the razzle-dazzle--collapsing beach shacks for Total cereal ads, exploding fax machines for Canon--but nowadays, better than 20% of Cinnabar’s business comes from designing and building themed retail environments--stores. “Entertainment sells,” Katz explains. “When people aren’t shopping for necessities, they’re shopping to find happiness.”

Angelenos will encounter happiness at the new Warner Bros. store in the Beverly Center, Raffia at the Century City Marketplace and Baby Guess on Rodeo Drive. For Raffia, more or less a tony tchotchekes shop, owner Linda Berman says she “needed something that looked oddly familiar, that approximated the past.” Cinnabar designed the store’s faux-Americana “down to the drawer handles,” says Katz. At Baby Guess, an unabashedly Wild West motiff has proved equally popular.

Now Katz and colleagues are taking their act on the road; they recently opened a Paris office. “Shopping center projects are coming on like gangbusters in Europe,” notes Katz. And Japanese businesses are beating a path to Cinnabar. “The Japanese,” says Katz “have learned that Americans know something about thematic merchandising.”