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Apparel: Fashion Designers Surf Big Wave

Apparel: Fashion Designers Surf Big Wave

By JENNIFER BELLANTONIO

Brian Hirth, owner of Santa Ana-based Melmarc, started in the screen-printing business back in 1976.

He’d walked up and down the streets peddling T-shirts. Back then his biggest clients: local restaurants and nightclubs that used T’s for advertising and small motorcycle businesses that made after-market accessories.

“It wasn’t like you had this mass audience you could sell T-shirts to,” Hirth said. “The T-shirt business was nothing like it is today. Everyone was just getting started.”

Flash forward 28 years and Orange County has become a design hub for lifestyle and fashion apparel companies. With 13,000 apparel manufacturing jobs, Orange County has overtaken San Francisco as the state’s second largest garment center, behind Los Angeles’ 65,000 jobs.

Screen printer Melmarc now makes its bread and butter from the big crop of surf companies and retailers that rooted in the area, including Billabong USA and Stussy, both of Irvine, and Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc.

“As the world started accepting lifestyle apparel, Orange County has grown into being the place to be,” said Susan Crank, chief executive of Anaheim-based Lunada Bay Corp., which makes swimwear for brands that include Lucky Brand, bebe and Becca.

A few decades ago that buzz was just a whisper.

It began when a handful of apparel manufacturers from Los Angeles set up in the area.

The lure: “The quality of life,” said Raj Bhathal, founder and chief executive of Tustin-based Raj Manufacturing Inc. “It’s paradise to live here.”

The swimwear maker, which started in Gardena in 1968, was one of the area’s first apparel pioneers. The company moved its headquarters to Santa Ana in 1970. Eight years later it moved to Tustin.

Since then it has grown to about 400 workers and a handful of brands. It makes women’s and children’s swimwear at its 100,000-square-foot sewing and distribution operations here.

Upscale women’s clothier St. John Knits Inc. was also among OC’s fashion pioneers.

The Irvine-based company, which employs about 4,800 people worldwide, moved its operations from Los Angeles to Irvine in 1971.

It was founded by Robert Gray and his future wife, Marie, in 1962. Then Robert was a graduate of the University of Southern California and his then fianc & #233;e, Marie, was a fashion model who was inspired by a knitting machine to make sleeveless dresses for herself and her friends.

Robert began selling her designs to specialty retail stores and things grew from there.

St. John started with a handful of sewing machines and a 4,000-square-foot factory. When it moved to OC, St. John settled in a 20,000-square-foot facility, even though Marie at first was dubious about all the growth and wondered how they’d fill the space.

The mid- to late-1970s brought another wave of growth to OC.

A big driver: surf.

Ocean Pacific Apparel Corp. and Gotcha International, both of Irvine, were among the hot brands with their retro-styled wood-button knit tops and neon-green board shorts.

They drove the 1980s surf craze and fueled business for local T-shirt and swim manufacturers, such as Lunada Bay, which began in Los Angeles in 1980 as an original licensee for Op’s beachwear (the company moved to Anaheim in 1992).

Apparel powerhouses, such as Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc., which expects to hit $1 billion in sales this year, also were taking hold.

Initially based in Australia, Quiksilver launched in the U.S. in 1976, when current Chief Executive Bob McKnight and surf legend Jeff Hakman started selling board shorts from the front room of their house on 56th Street in Newport Beach.

They spent the next decades building a brand that put the surf lifestyle on the map,and eventually New York fashion runways.

Quiksilver now employs about 1,560 workers worldwide, with about 1,262 in its 700,000-square-foot surf city campus.

Competitors have sprung up all around. To name a few: Billabong; Santa Cruz-based O’Neill Clothing, which runs an office Irvine; Costa Mesa-based Hurley International; which is owned by Oregon-based Nike Inc.; Rusty Apparel; and Lost Enterprises, both of Irvine.

Along with their rise came teen apparel retailer Pacific Sunwear, which started with a handful of shops and now runs about 800 stores under the PacSun, d.e.m.o. and PacSun outlet names in 49 states and Puerto Rico.

Orange County has become “Velcro Valley,” said Peter “PT” Townend, former marketing and events director at Primedia Inc.’s Action Sports Group in San Clemente.

“You’ve got your major hub of surfwear makers right here,” said Melmarc’s Hirth. “When I deal with a company in New York they want a California influence.”

Another lifestyle brand that put OC on the map: Santa Monica-based Mossimo Inc., which started out in Irvine in 1980s. The brand eventually struck a licensing pact with Target Corp. to produce clothing under the Mossimo label.

Over the years, big contract apparel makers and distributors have been lured to OC. Anaheim-based Alstyle Apparel & Activewear Manufacturing Co., which started in Chicago in 1976, first opened a small distribution operation in Santa Ana in the late 1980s to early 1990s. Alstyle makes T-shirts, sweat shirts, pants and shirts for names such as Nike Inc., Gap Inc.’s Old Navy and Guess? Inc. Plus, it designs and produces its own sportswear and T-shirts under brands such as Murina, Hyland and AAA.

Alstyle employs more than 4,000 workers worldwide, about 1,800 of which are in OC. Other contract apparel makers settling in the area include Anaheim-based AST Sportswear Inc.

But OC’s apparel scene has seen growing pains.

The surf boom big in the 1980s eventually crashed.

The fallout put pressure on big apparel contractors.

“It lessened production,” said Melmarc’s Hirth. “We had to scurry around and make sure we hung on to the good ones.”

The apparel makers also were forced to make changes, including diversifying to include girls clothing, and street and skate wear.

Through the years, an increasing number of local apparel companies have shifted all or some of their production to Mexico, Central America or Asia to save on costs and be more competitive with lower-priced, mass-market brands.

“We’re driven by demand. Made in the U.S. product is more expensive, so there’s less demand,” said Tony Castillo, vice president of business development at Alstyle, which recently shifted some sewing to a bigger production facility in Chicago and plants in Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador.

Last year, AST Sportswear trimmed local workers because it’s been upping production staff at a plant in Ensenada that it opened in 2001. And AST created a new brand, AeroUSA, which is cut in the U.S. and assembled in Mexico.

The years have also brought more shopping options.

A number of surfwear and apparel brands have branched into retail and opened branded stores. They include Costa Mesa-based Paul Frank Industries Inc., Quiksilver, Oakley, St. John and Billabong, all of which run stores in OC and nationally (some even internationally).

You can spot a few at South Coast Plaza, OC’s largest shopping center, which has seen its own evolution. It opened in 1967 with May Co. and Sears and now counts more than 280 boutiques and department stores in about 2.8 million square feet of retail and dining space. The center draws 28 million shoppers annually.

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