Shopping for Southland Sample Sales

In New York, you walk down Broadway and 7th Avenue in the central fashion district and gather up flyers advertising sample sales. Here in Southern California, you just check to be sure your fax machine is on.

Drive-by shopping at yard sales is a Southern California phenomenon, but when it comes to advertising sample sales, the whole system moves underground, well out of the public eye. It travels via fax, e-mail, mail and word of mouth. Just as club-hopping requires that you have your name on “The List,” you have to be on “The List” to get notified here.

How you get on these lists is another matter. Here are a few ways to get in the door.

* Check store mailing lists and seasonal promotions .

The ultra-hip sportswear designer Mossimo has huge parking-lot sales outside his Irvine factory in February and August. Announcement flyers are sent to those on the mailing lists at his retail stores in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza and Pasadena’s One Colorado.

The annual St. John Thanksgiving weekend selloff is not just a sale--it’s an event. Hundreds of fans of the pricey knitwear camp out the night before in the parking lot of the Irvine headquarters to get their priority numbers and socialize with “old friends” whom they see only at the sale every year. Clothing, shoes and accessories from the previous season, as well as slightly imperfect stock, are usually sold at a nearby office space rented for the event. To get on the mailing list, call the main office.

Designer David Dart used his Montana Avenue store in Los Angeles to sell off samples. He shipped over things to sell at greatly reduced prices during this year’s spring sidewalk sale.

* Go to big benefit parties with fashion ties .

Richard Tyler doesn’t have sample sales because his one and only set of samples stays in his personal archives. But you can get Tyler’s impeccably tailored clothes at reduced prices at two huge charity sales. Tyler is one of many designers who donate clothes from past seasons to 7th on Sale in New York and its West Coast equivalent, Divine Design. This year’s L.A. Divine Design, beginning Dec. 1, honors Todd Oldham. Those who have already signed up to donate samples include Tyler, Oldham, Dakota Smith, Rampage, Misc., Gregory Poe, Romeo Gigli, Andrew Fezza and Moschino. Los Angeles stores such as Traffic and Maxfield also donate clothes for the cause. It costs $20 to get in the door of this giant public sale, but once you’re in, all the clothes around you are 50% to 75% off retail, and profits go to Project Angel Food and DIFFA/Los Angeles, a chapter of Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS.

Another local benefit event with the sample-sale theme takes place every other year. The Fashion Industries Guild of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center held its Manufacturers’ Charity Sale recently and raised $65,000 for the new pediatric AIDS wing. Guess, Bongo, Platinum, Karen Kane, Rampage and Esprit donated clothes. The next one: 1997.

* Other charity links.

Manufacturers sometimes tie in privately with charities to sell off samples, and volunteers for those causes get opportunities to buy. One example: AIDS Project Los Angeles volunteers were invited to join insiders, stylists and press at the Dr. Martens Los Angeles showroom for its private sample sale. They sipped English ales, ate chips and plunked down $25 to $35 for boots normally going for $85 to $120. The London-based company gave 100% of the sample-sale take to APLA.

Manufacturers are also putting a new spin on the outlet route. Excess stock and leftover samples usually end up at factory outlet stores, jobbers or discounters. Now some are donating these goods to the Ultimate Outlet. This South Pasadena store is a training facility for adults with learning disabilities or mental illness.

“We make donations to the Ultimate Outlet as a charitable organization or sell them clothes at a reduced cost so they can make a profit,” said Barry Sacks, chairman and chief executive officer of Chorus Line, maker of All That Jazz and related labels. The store is open to the public, sells clothes at a discount and plows its profits into education programs.

* Nose around downtown Los Angeles at the end of the month.

The California Mart reinstated its open-to-all Super Sale on the last Saturday of the month--the next one is July 29--to eliminate public traffic inside its doors on Fridays.

“People think this is a mall,” said Dana Valenzuela, public relations coordinator. “They wander around trying to return things.”

Clearly, the mart doesn’t approve. It is, instead, encouraging its tenants to sell off samples and extra goods during the Saturday sales in the Exhibition Hall, 110 E. 9th St. Shoppers are charged an admission fee of $1. For more information, call (800) 979-0949.

Across the street, showrooms at 127 E. 9th St. have samples for sale the last Friday of each month. Not all showrooms participate, but the dozen or so that do have clothes or accessories for sale are listed on a sign by the first-floor directory and have signs on their doors. No checks, no credit cards, no returns.

* Make friends with people in the business.

Most of the large surf-wear companies based in Orange County hold warehouse sales two to four times a year. The catch? You have to be invited. Organizers confide that a letter to the company can sometimes land outsiders a coveted pass.

Smaller manufacturers sell off samples in home sales. To go, you have to know someone, or know someone who knows someone. One former model became famous for sample sales in her apartment.

“I did it because I loved getting clothes wholesale,” she explained. “I would ask the reps I worked for if they minded if I sold their samples for them. I’d call my friends, and they’d ask if they could bring their friends. My list got to be 150 people. The cream-colored carpet got trashed, but my landlady was all for it because she bought a lot from me.”

It also pays to collect salespeople’s business cards and check in with them at the end of a season. (That means June for fall samples and January for spring samples.) Traveling salespeople who are required to pay for their samples are only too happy to sell them to you. They generally pay one-fourth to one-half of the retail price, and they’ll sell items for one-half of retail, which is the same as the wholesale price. Samples are small (Size 6 to 8) or medium (Size 10). These are the ultimate “trunk sales,” as you’re often literally getting great stuff from the trunk of a car.