Out on a weekend shopping trip, Jennifer Jordan was browsing through the racks at Lucky Brand Dungarees, when her husband picked out a $28 dollar T-shirt he thought was perfect for their 2-year-old son.
Certainly, the tee was pricier than usual duds at Babies “R” Us or Target. But Jordan’s husband, who had been weeding through adult clothes, ignored the price tag and ponied up for the pint-sized shirt, even though its wearable shelf life is probably limited to a few months.
“It was so cute that he wasn’t even concerned about the fact that it was near $30,” said Jordan, director of children’s apparel leasing at downtown’s California Market Center. “There is this impulse buying coming to children’s.”
That impulse buying has ruled the women’s apparel market, where the normalization of $300 jeans shows what consumers will spend on a regular visit to their nearby boutique or department store. But children’s clothing typically lags the women’s clothing in styles and it has in consumption habits too.
For their kids, women have typically paid top dollar for frilly dresses and miniature suits only for birthdays, graduations and holiday parties. To this day, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. are the top destinations for value-conscious shoppers filling their kids’ closets on a budget.
In the Southland, though, wallet-busting kids’ clothes have now made their way into stores. Many apparel companies coming out of the adult field have added children’s lines in hopes of selling goods to mothers already snatching up their grown-up products. Retailers often charge at least $100 for a pair of kids’ jeans and $50 for shirts to go with those pants.
“To people that don’t have kids, if I said I have jeans in my store for $200, they would be like, ‘Oh my god,'” said Kourtney Kardashian, a partner in Smooch For Kids, which has the Smooch children’s store in Calabasas. “But those are the things that go.”
Among the apparel companies now catering to kids are True Religion Apparel Inc., Taverniti and Antik denim maker Blue Holdings Inc., James Perse Enterprises Inc. and Mo Industries Inc., responsible for the Splendid brand. And trendy adult boutiques are lining up to get in on the action: M. Fredric & Co. Inc., Lisa Kline Inc., Kitson and Planet Blue have started or will soon be starting kids’ components.
“The economy is good and parents are spending it on their kids kind of as rewards for themselves,” said Mardi Fox, co-owner of M. Fredric. “It is a positive, fun experience to go into the kids’ store and dress your kids like a mini mom in True Religion jeans.”
But Sandra Martinez, owner of the children’s apparel wholesale showroom In Play in the California Market Center, said there is a limit to what people will spend for their children. After Antik denim proposed to price its jeans above $160, she helped coax the company down to a more reasonable $100 per pair. “There is a fine line of what the parents will tolerate,” she declared.
