Fighting for Fashion: Sample Sales Heat Up

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The New York Sun

With their clothes and purses abandoned in piles, shoppers at the Vivienne Tam sample sale scurried around a garment district showroom in tights and bras. Women jostled for a quick look in the mirror before returning to the racks for more handfuls of fall clothes discounted up to 75%.They had good reason to hurry: The sale would close in 10 minutes, whether they found the perfect dress or not.

“It’s a great rush, but you have to brace yourself,” a photo editor, Ulrika Thunberg, who had just jumped in and out of a glittery brown skirt, said.

All over the city, ’tis the season for dedicated shoppers to brace themselves. As the traditional holiday shopping season heads into high gear this Thanksgiving weekend, the parallel world of sample sales is also entering its busiest period.

The sales, which offer items at wholesale or less, are a product of designers’ end-of-year overstock and consumers’ holiday shopping needs. From the items retailers rejected to the garments worn by models during fashion week, this is when fall’s leftovers are given a second chance.

The typical sample sale is thrown together by boutique staff members and barely advertised. But many top sales still draw scores of women who are willing to claw their way through dozens of disorganized racks to find those deeply discounted diamonds in the rough. At the multi-designer fall sale held by Shelly & Renee Productions, for example, evening gowns that retail for $3,800 could be had for less than $350, while fur and wool coats were discounted by 75%. The material marathon enters its peak this month and will continue into December, with more than 300 sales taking place in New York, according to the S&B Report, a monthly newsletter that tracks the sales.

The seasonal climax comes as the sample sale industry is on the rise. With the popularity of e-mail newsletters like Top Button, Daily Candy, and Fashion Wire Daily, what were once exclusive events have become increasingly accessible to the public. A sales executive at Top Button, Cynthia Vickers, said the company saw a 30% jump in subscribers during the past two years, with 200,000 people signing up to receive the company’s bulletins on sales and fashion advice.

With a rapidly expanding consumer base, more manufacturers and designers are recognizing sample sales as more than an opportunity to clear out the storage closet. Many now view the sales as a chance to turn a real profit.

“It’s obviously become a bigger trend because there are more people coming to buy the overstock but are willing to pay more than someone would at a discount store,” Ms. Vickers said. “There are more up-and-coming designers realizing, ‘Hey, this is a way I can generate some revenue.'”

Shoppers can choose from nearly 40 sample sales each week until the end of December. “We once figured out that if you quit your job and did nothing but sample shopping, it would still be hard to go to every sale now,” the editor of the S&B Report, Elysa Lazar, said.

Victoria Polevoy, who said her occupation is “divorcing my husband,” was trying to do just that one morning last week. She began waiting in line at 8:30 a.m. for the 10 a.m. opening of the AEFFE showroom sale, which featured designers such as Alberta Ferretti and Jean Paul Gaultier. Fresh out of the Moschillo showroom around the corner, Ms. Polevoy had scribbled her lengthy shopping agenda onto a paper napkin.

“It’s like a sport,” Ms. Polevoy, an Upper East Side resident, said. “You say ‘Happy Hunting’ to your friends because you need the luck. Everyone’s going to be competing for the same best buys.”

Shoppers like Ms. Polevoy, who has eight years of sample shopping experience under her fashionable belt, have adapted to the frenzied and sometimes cutthroat environment of sales. But some have had enough of the discount drama. Leah Nista, a 24-year-old graphic designer who attended the Vera Wang and Triple 5 Soul sample sales last fall, said the selection wasn’t worth enduring elbows at the racks. “You’re waiting in line for like four hours and when you finally get in, it looks like a bomb went off and everything’s extra-large,” she said.

Ms. Nista was taking a break from the usual sale scene at the Altman building on Friday. Her friend, who’d paid a $100 membership fee, had given her a VIP guest pass for the privilege of shopping at Billion Dollar Babes, one of a growing number of shopping events that are sample sales in name but not in spirit. The event features designer items by Cynthia Rowley, Tocca, and Sass & Bide — along with plenty of registers, a bar, complimentary hair styling, and, most important, plenty of space. Lucky Shops, a similar event sponsored by Lucky Magazine, typically draws 5,000 women during a weekend in early November.

These perks are all part of Kate Nobelius and Shelli-Anne Couch’s attempt to establish a social atmosphere. Their 5-year-old company is part of an overall shift toward turning sample sales into an organized business.

“I think we’re taking the average sample sale and making an international brand of it,” Ms. Nobelius said.

Ms. Lazar, the editor, has run sample sales for designers including Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein for the past 20 years. The other big names in the sample sale business are Shelly & Renee Productions, Soiffer-Haskin, and SSS Sample Sales. Designers hire them to plan every element of the sale: getting cash registers, booking showrooms, finding temporary staff, and marketing the event.

Brooklyn resident Simone Trakhtenberg was perusing the racks of clothes by Etro, Tracy Reese, and Barbara Bui at Shelly & Renee’s fall sale on Wednesday in Midtown. She said she appreciated the organizers’ personal touch at managed sales.

“This is perfect because it’s comfy and cozy here,” she said. “You get their input and can actually make a good decision.”

According to Ms. Lazar, management services have been instrumental in refining sample sales’ rougher edges. “Sales have gotten a lot more sophisticated,” Ms. Lazar said. “You’re no longer going into a dark, dingy storeroom, up three flights of stairs, where you have to knock on a door three times and say the password.”


The New York Sun

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