An Eye for Style : Maybe you’ve seen the provocative ads. Or heard the name: Rampage. From a modest dream, Larry Hansel has fashioned a clothing empire.
When he was 20, Larry Hansel had a thriving car detail business and a modest dream: He wanted to represent a clothing line and drive cross-country in a van “like a cowboy on the road.”
Thirteen years later, Hansel is president of Rampage Clothing Co., the multidivisional, multimillion-dollar firm whose provocative ads cover hundreds of L.A. buses and bus benches. A huge beehive of an organization--where employees are encouraged to read self-help books and attend motivational seminars--Rampage has saturated the junior apparel market and is moving full speed into its own stores, kiddie boutiques and women’s clothing.
A few months ago, Hansel got more than a van. “Instead of doing the limo thing,” he went for a white Chevrolet Suburban, customized with a bar, television and horseshoe-shaped leather sofa. And he now pays others to rep seven (soon to be eight) lines. They range from the company’s bread-and-butter “junior” dresses, knits and recycled clothing to kiddie clothing and CDC, a line of contemporary dresses. A private-label division produces merchandise for stores such as Mervyn’s.
While the name Rampage (inspired by a newspaper story) and that eye seem to be everywhere, the merchandise is not; it is sold only in department stores--and Judy’s. Last year, Hansel quietly rescued the chain from bankruptcy, keeping 47 of 62 stores and bringing them into the black with the Rampage philosophy:
“It’s a brand-new vision about business. It’s done with product and people. The product is more accessible, fresher and presented better. It’s more exclusive. We make over half of it ourselves, and we don’t sell to other stores. And there’s a fresh new energy. We’re looking at how every job is done and reworking how the managers take ‘ownership’ of the stores.”
On a retail roll, Hansel, who believes the word junior is obsolete because of shrinking demographics, has plans for 10 Rampage stores “for women 15 to 35.” The first opened in March in Reno. A second followed in Houston.
But these are just appetizers. The “actual prototype,” which Hansel will describe only as “urban, raw, sensual, soft” and “a collection of boutiques under one roof,” is scheduled for an August opening in the Beverly Center. Next door will be the first Friends store, a “kiddie boudoir” for girls 4 to 13.
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So much success so soon with so little start-up money ($30,000) has turned Hansel into an unlikely garment Goliath.
A former high school athlete who “skated through school,” he reads Jung and such bestsellers as Stephen R. Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled.” He claims an aversion to interviews (“I haven’t been that interested in creating notoriety”).
But once he is seated behind the glistening mahogany desk in his Downtown L.A. headquarters--surrounded by an executive toy airplane that has sailed into a lush potted plant, Japanese art, caricatures by his deceased father and photographs of his young nieces--he slides into easy conversation.
Although the company has had problems, including delivery snafus, they seem small compared with the start-up woes of 11 years ago. “We were undercapitalized. We were in the dark looking for the light switch,” he recalls. A banker, who Hansel swears never glanced at him, only at his business plan, threw him the needed credit line.
“If it weren’t for him, I would not be in business. I didn’t go back to the bank for a year. I thought if they saw this kid, they would take the loan away.”
The story reveals a Hansel trait: He likes to spread the kudos around. Last year, he donated $10,000 to Otis College of Art and Design and participated in its critics’ design program. When he was honored by the school recently (along with Cross Colours founders Carl Jones and T.J. Walker and Mossimo founder Mossimo Giannulli), he thanked the Rampage team for making him look good and the Otis faculty for their skills (“What you are is what I aspire to be”). Then he moved on to the students: “You’ve got those green carrot tops on your head. Looking at the world 11 1/2 years ago, I was just as green, and I want to tell you, you can grow to be whatever you want to be.”
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Some critics say Hansel’s company is growing too fast to survive. Others denounce him as a knockoff artist. And while Hansel considers Guess and Esprit his primary competition, industry analysts say it is more likely Judy Knapp and All That Jazz.
But fans, including Barbara Fields, attribute any negative remarks to sour grapes.
“He’s making some smart moves,” says Fields, president of the eponymous buying office, which serves as a fashion consultant to retailers. “Buying Judy’s was one.” Opening more stores, including the boutiques to carry existing kids’ lines such as Rampage Girl, is another, she believes. “Knowing Larry, he’s got it under control.”
Sandy Richman, co-owner of the Directives West buying office, agrees: “He’s bright, he’s aggressive, he’s focused, and he thinks long term rather than short term. I don’t think a lot of people in the industry do that.”
David Plummer, owner of a Los Angeles knitwear company and an Otis marketing instructor, sees Hansel as both a Renaissance man and “a California contemporary man. He never sees any ceiling, any limits. He’s got imagination and the guts to go with it. He’s building an empire, and he’s building it faster and bigger than most people do, and it’s sound.
“He’s got a couple of smart sisters, too,” Plummer says. “They seem to be on top of it as well. And he hires good people and gives them plenty of leash.”
Everything but the sewing of Rampage garments goes on in one place, the 300,000-square-foot headquarters. “It’s like a football stadium,” Fields marvels. “You almost need roller skates to get from one side to the other.”
The 30-year-old former beer bottling plant was destined for demolition until Hansel drove around the wood-beamed interior in his car and realized he was looking at another “great, great opportunity.”
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A shoeshine stand was his first big opportunity. He was 10 and already emulating his Air Force father--”a Southern country man, a businessman” who managed military clubs from Casablanca, where Hansel was born, to Lake Wells, Fla., where he went to high school.
“When you’re shining shoes, you really get to know somebody,” he says. “I was very thirsty for knowledge. I learned a lot. It was like a college education for me.”
Disappointing his French-born mother, who wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer, Hansel dropped out of Mesa Community College in Arizona after one semester. Looking for the freedom associated with selling a clothing line, he approached Esprit, Ocean Pacific and Made in the Shade. “Everyone laughed,” he says. But he finally got a chance to count stock for OP in Arizona department stores--at night, after locking up his two detail shops.
A cousin in Montreal unexpectedly offered him a sportswear line--and his first big break. Hansel moved to San Diego, picked stores from a phone book, employed his sister Bridgette as a model and taught himself accounts receivables. “All of a sudden, boom! I was doing what I had dreamed of doing. I didn’t know anything. But I was so energized by being in the club, it didn’t matter.”
After his cousin abandoned the U.S. market, Hansel and Bridgette, now Rampage’s vice president of sales, developed a sportswear line and took it to stores--in his black Camaro. Their first customer was Judy’s, one reason Hansel bought the chain. “It’s very close and dear to my heart,” he says. “It has a tremendous heritage that we want to bring back.”
Once he sealed the deal, he had dinner with founder Marcia Israel, who had sold the stores to Hong Kong investors in 1989. “As a courtesy,” she says, “and to tell me how much he loved Judy’s and how much of an influence I was in his life.”
Hansel’s charm is evident as he tours the airy Rampage offices occupied primarily by women (90% of his executives are women). A slight, dark, handsome bachelor who often sports a 5 o’clock shadow and avant-garde Japanese menswear, he twirls the dressmakers dummies as if they were dance partners, studying the garments, asking questions, passing out the praise, talking numbers: “Eight collections a month, 1,000 different styles. We’re the most aggressive product makers in the country. We produce too much product.”
He embraces his “original pattern maker” and delights her with his introduction: “The sexiest 70-year-old in the world.” In another room, he asks Connie Franko, 24, about her wedding plans.
Franko has worked with Hansel for seven years. He interviewed her, and she recalls being impressed and scared by his capabilities. “He was changing the address of the building. And I said to myself: ‘Who is this?’ ”
Then as now, her boss is fastidious. Rampage was formerly down the street, at 1731 Santa Fe. Hansel--who says, “I was into numbers at the time, and it sounded weird”--received the city’s permission to switch to a more sonorous 1737.
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In the meantime, Franko has graduated from receptionist to business manager of the sportswear division. A journey, as she calls it, made in typical Rampage style. “Basically, I asked for more and more responsibility. I said: ‘I’m smart and I’ll work my ass off for you.’ I grew as the company grew. It was great timing.”
“I’m in to personal growth,” says Hansel, who talks about the Rampage “family.”
It includes sisters Bridgette and Michelle.
“We’re a harmonious team,” says Michelle, 32, vice president of the kids division. “I think we always thought we would be doing something together because we worked at a very young age. Our parents felt very strongly about earning and the gratification of earning. I started baby-sitting when I was 11. Larry was a paperboy, mowed lawns or did whatever he could get his hands on. My mother would say: ‘Put part in the bank and part you can spend.’ ”
Hansel describes his dream business as “an art form. But art is not just about designing product. It’s about building a relationship and nurturing and caring for that relationship and finding solutions that are synergistic and good for both people.”
Although he could be rushing toward a billion-dollar empire (he puts it at $250 million now), Hansel says he doesn’t even know how much he has in his personal bank account.
“Money can be great if you can make it work for you and terrible if you become a slave of it. And I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. I don’t see (money) as a source of contentment or security or pleasure. For me, the greatest thing about business is seeing people and dreams grow. A long time ago, we dreamed this thing. And the joy is in living the dream.”
