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Spy V Style: First Trendy Golf Clothes, Now Uniforms

Mission Viejo’s Spy V Style is behind the uniforms you see on workers at Charo Chicken or Daphne’s Greek Cafe.

The company designs and makes uniforms for restaurant chains and other companies. It counts more than $1 million in yearly sales.

Customers can provide Spy V Style with designs or style ideas. Uniforms are mostly made at factories in China. It also contracts with U.S. factories, too. Large orders with more than 1,000 pieces are made in China. Small orders are made domestically, said Eric Spivey, Spy V Style founder.

The company has five workers in its 1,000-square-foot headquarters and contracts four employees at a 1,600-square-foot building in Costa Mesa, where workers embroider uniforms. The company also has an office in China that oversees production there.

Competitors include Cincinnati-based Cintas Corp., Aramark Corp.’s Aramark Uniform & Career Apparel LLC in Burbank and the Uniform Maker LLC in Walnut.

Spivey said he started out making golf clothes.

His golf clothes were designed for younger, stylish golfers who liked action sports such as surfing and skateboarding. Celebrities such as Adrian Young of No Doubt and Carson Daly were wearing his clothes, he said.

Spivey put his entire savings into the business and struggled, he said. He made promotional clothes and uniforms for companies to pay the bills, he said.

“It was a hard sell at first. People definitely thought it was a weird concept,” Spivey said.

Now, clothing makers such as Huntington Beach’s Quiksilver Inc., Sweden’s J. Lindeberg and Pringle of Scotland are making trendy golf clothes.

After an unsuccessful search for investors, Spivey said he decided to focus on what was bringing in sales,uniforms.

“When you start your business you have to learn the hard way,” he said. “I wiped out my savings, but I learned a lot.”


Organic Tequila

Chris Melendez sure knows how to change careers.

Melendez, a former banker who led companies such as Newport Beach’s Tempest Asset Management, now is doing tequila.

Melendez cofounded 4 Copas Tequila, a Newport Beach-based company that makes 100% organic tequila. The company is private and doesn’t disclose sales. It counts five workers.

He started the business in 2004 with his father and two partners.

“I was working all over the world for large commercial banks and it was great but at the end I just wanted to do something more fulfilling,” Melendez said. “This job is just as time consuming but it’s so much more fun.”

4 Copas contracts with an organic distillery in Jalisco, Mexico, to make its tequila. The company’s Anejo, Blanco and Reposado tequilas are made with Weber blue agave plants that are grown organically.

4 Copas cultivates and supervises its own agave plantations. The agave is baked and then distilled in stills. It’s then poured into hand blown, decorated glass bottles.

Miami-based Southern Wine & Spirits of America helps distribute the liquor, which runs $55 to $90. It’s sold in stores, restaurants, bars and nightclubs in California, New York, Hawaii, Texas, Nevada and Arizona.

Jessica Alba and Tom Leykis have been seen sipping it.

Rivals include Las Vegas-based Patr & #243;n Spirits Co. and OC local, Trago International Inc. in San Juan Capistrano, among others.

4 Copas also produces agave nectar, an all-natural sweetener that’s diabetic-friendly. It’s sweeter but healthier than sugar, Melendez said.


UV Buster

San Clemente-based Ayana Apparel makes trendy, ultraviolet-protective clothes for women.

The company makes shirts, dresses, pants and tunics out of microfiber nylon that’s either washed with waterproof UV-protective solutions or knit with UV-protective fibers. Its biggest rivals are Minneapolis-based Coolibar and Australia’s Stingray Sun Protection Products Pty Ltd.

Ayana Apparel buys its fabrics from Taiwan and makes its clothes at a factory in Los Angeles. Clothes are stored at the factory and sold for $149 to $169 through the company’s Web site.

Sonja Gfeller Aschebacher started the company last year after moving from Switzerland to Orange County in 2003. Before she moved to the U.S., she held various positions at European fashion companies.

When she moved to OC, she spent a lot of time at the beach. Naturally fair-skinned, she noticed that her skin was becoming dry and damaged. She decided to start wearing UV-protective clothing. She had a hard time finding stylish pieces.

“A lot of UV-protective clothes are plain. I think women need to have the option to look stylish while they’re protecting their skin,” she said.

Ayana Apparel is privately held and doesn’t disclose sales. It counts three full-time workers and plans to hire more this year, Aschebacher said.

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