There’s Something About Lucy
Holly Sharp has a new friend, and she can’t stop talking about her.
Or writing about her.
On the desk in the Costa Mesa studio of the 39-year-old fashion designer is a biography of sorts titled “Who is Lucy Love?” It is a litany of honorable and fun qualities that describe the fictional muse of Sharp’s latest fashion foray: an apparel line targeting the much coveted 15- to 30-year-old women’s market.
When Sharp discusses Lucy Love, she does so with the conviction that this is a real individual. She talks about what Lucy Love likes or doesn’t. She becomes increasingly animated, even a little teary-eyed in her enthusiasm.
“Lucy Love is pro-active and she has power. She’s the first on the dance floor and the last to say goodbye. She surfs. She is the entertainment of the party. She strives daily to achieve her personal best. She’s really magical,” Sharp gushes. “Lucy Love loves life.”
Beginning this weekend, Sharp will find out if young women--in the form of retail buyers--will love Lucy as well. The 80-piece collection will be unveiled to retailers, investors, competitors and the fashion press at the Action Sports Retailer Trade Expo in San Diego.
For Sharp, the four-day show may prove to be the most important ever in her 18 years as one of the most prominent designers in the Southland apparel industry.
Her custom-made dresses are in demand by the hip and well-to-do--including actresses such as Andie McDowell and Demi Moore. The Holly Sharp Boutique in Corona del Mar is a favorite personal stop of East Coast fashion magazine editors. And the GirlStar juniors label she directed for Irvine-based Gotcha Sportswear International got off to a meteoric start in late 1995, only to plateau as internal bureaucracy limited its growth.
Apparently there’s only one thing left for Sharp to prove in the world of fashion: that she can cut it as a businesswoman.
The prospects for a new young women’s wear brand in a saturated marketplace hardly appears favorable. But industry experts believe Lucy Love could succeed on Holly Sharp’s name alone.
“She’s an outstanding designer and I don’t think you’d ever want to bet against her,” said Tony Cherbak, an apparel expert at Deloitte & Touche LLP in Costa Mesa. “What she did with GirlStar . . . well, let’s just say that was one of Gotcha’s better concepts. She’s up against a very competitive market, but there’s always room for new ideas.”
That was made startling clear four years ago when Quiksilver Inc., the Costa Mesa young men’s surf apparel company, launched its Roxy line of board shorts and other surf apparel aimed at young girls. Today, Roxy is the company’s fastest-growing division and is on a pace to do $65 million in sales this year. The brand is widely considered untouchable by retailers and is held up as a model to aspire to, rather than compete against.
Still, there appears to be plenty of potential in the 15- to 30-year-old women’s market, which numbers 27 million in the United States and is growing at twice the rate of the overall population, according to 1996 Census Bureau statistics. On top of that, teen and twentysomething females love to shop--three to four times a month, at $44 to $59 a trip, according to Stillerman Jones & Co.
To crack into that market, Sharp and her partner in business and life, husband Michael Sharp, 46, for the first time have brought aboard a financial advisor. He is Andy Purmort, a 43-year-old managing director in the Newport Beach office of Creative Business Strategies, a Boulder, Colo., venture-capital firm whose clients range from medical groups to Internet firms. He will be acting chief executive of Lucy Love, despite the fact that much of his business background came in the water-filtration industry, where he spent six years making acquisitions for U.S. Filter Corp. in Palm Desert.
“It’s funny that I’m now looking at an apparel company,” says Purmort, a graduate of the USC business school entrepreneur program, who grew up in Newport Beach watching the surfwear industry explode around him. “What I’m finding is business is business. I’m relying on the Sharps to oversee the creative and operational aspects of the company.”
Beyond impressing the trade show attendees this weekend, Sharp’s top priority is to get the Lucy Love name before consumers. She plans a print ad campaign in teen and twentysomething magazines, a Web site that goes online this week (https://www.lucy love.com), and sponsorship of female athletes and scholars in Southern California.
Eventually, Sharp plans a full catalog of branded products, from footwear and CD-ROMs to linens and picture frames.
It is Purmort’s job to finance and organize that growth. He plans to sell a 10% stake in the Holly Sharp Co. to venture-capital investors this fall. As Lucy Love grows in the next year or two, proceeds will be used to acquire fledgling manufacturers. That’s a departure from most upstart apparel companies, which use licensing agreements to grow quickly without eating up a lot of cash.
Manufacturing can be a risky venture as consumer demand increases and shrinks in the marketplace. A company takes on more financial responsibility as it hires more employees, leases buildings and buys equipment, as opposed to simply hiring outside contractors, Cherbak said. But when demand soars, so do profits.
By fall, the Sharps and Purmort plan to have a formal board of directors in place. And in three to five years, the goal is an initial public stock offering that will launch Lucy Love onto the international fashion stage.
It would be a long way from Sharp’s start in Newport Beach, where she cut dresses for her girlfriends at the kitchen table, as well as funky shirts for her guitar-playing husband and his bandmates. When an apparel sales representative spotted them decked out in Holly’s designs at a Hollywood nightclub, he begged them for a meeting the next morning at the California Mart in downtown Los Angeles.
The Sharps and an entourage arrived wearing their outfits from the night before and left with a $50,000 order for ‘50s-inspired party dresses from a major department store. Holly’s mother, Betty Stussy, co-signed a loan and the then-newlyweds entered the fashion business with Sharp Designs.
“It just seemed like a normal thing to do,” recalls Sharp, who was 21 at the time and a new mother. Her older brother, Shawn Stussy, had just begun selling his own signature line of surfboards and related apparel.
During the roaring ‘80s, when California fashion reigned, the Sharps met pop artist Andy Warhol, and designed a glamorous dress for an Absolut vodka campaign that featured then- upstarts Isaac Mizrahi and Robin Piccone.
The good times ended with the economic downturn in the early ‘90s and the Sharps supplemented operations by designing private-label apparel for the Limited and other retailers. They also decided that their future lied in Holly Sharp boutiques and within two years they opened three shops, including one in Del Mar.
But Sharp wasn’t able to translate her creative vision to a financial statement. Two of the stores closed leaving only Corona del Mar open.
For Lucy Love to work, the challenge will be figuring out “life after board shorts,” said Randy Hild, the Quiksilver vice president who oversees Roxy. “Right now, it’s all about going beyond the one-trick pony. Holly is a designer. She has the ability to move beyond that. I’m sure she’ll come up with a clever campaign.”
Sharp believes she already has the concept down. “It’s true to the beach and it’s pure Americana,” beams Sharp. “Think J. Crew goes surf.”
The line mixes timeless sportswear classics like crisp checked shirts, light-weight denim, plaid dresses and khaki T-shirts with more modern and urban knee-length skirts and V-neck tops.
“I want the customer to embrace our first product, clothes,” Sharp said. “I want her to really want it. This consumer is too smart to be fooled. We have to earn her respect.”
