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Recycling Surfer Sells Packaging to Quiksilver, Others

EarthPack turns trash into shopping bags, boxes and other packaging for some of Orange County’s biggest surfwear names.

The Irvine company does about $5 million in yearly sales designing and selling shopping bags, boxes, tissue paper and labels made from recycled materials.

EarthPack hires global and U.S. manufacturers to make its products.

Recycled paper, plastic and water-based inks are used.

The company makes bags and other stuff for Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc., Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., Cypress-based Vans Inc. and Paul Frank Industries Inc. and Volcom Inc., both of Costa Mesa.

EarthPack has 12 workers and a delivery van at its 15,000-square-foot headquarters. Competitors include packaging companies such as South Carolina’s Helix Poly Co. and Illinois’ Uline Inc.

Dave Bock started EarthPack in 1989. The Huntington Beach native and surfer came up with the idea to make and sell environmentally friendly packaging when he took a business class at Orange Coast Community College.

“As a surfer it always bugged me to see trash on the beach, but I never knew what ‘being green’ really meant until I started this business,” he said.

Starting EarthPack wasn’t a smooth ride. Bock said he struggled with limited money, experience, connections, help and time.

His dad, Mitch Bock, taught him how to be a business owner. Mitch Bock owned a window covering business in Huntington Beach and let his son rent part of his warehouse to start EarthPack, according to Dave Bock.

He said he didn’t get special treatment. His father treated him like any tenant renting space out of a building.

The experience was frustrating at times, he said, but helped him understand “how the world really works.”

Building credibility in packaging from an environmentally friendly standpoint also was tough, according to Bock.

“Years ago, being a ‘green’ packaging company was difficult because it was more expensive to get recycled products made,” he said. “But now with technology and buying power, it’s very affordable.”


Bikini Girls

Cameron Diaz and Lindsay Lohan wear them.

Bikinis from Santa Ana-based L*Space International are sold at more than 600 boutiques, swimsuit shops and via online retailers in the U.S., Canada, South Korea, Sweden and the U.K., among other countries.

L*Space, which doesn’t disclose sales, employs five full-time workers and 15 sales representatives.

The company’s bikinis are for the fit, twentysomething crowd. They’re glitzier and skimpier than bikinis from Quiksilver and others. Closer competitors include Costa Mesa’s Vitamin A Inc. and Salinas Swimwear of Solana Beach.

“My niche is the skimpier cut, high fashion bikini,” said Monica Wise, L*Space’s founder. “That’s what made L*Space grow, and we’re not straying away from where I started.”

The bikinis come in solid colors and prints. Some are decorated with rings, bars and foil fabrics. Sets sell for $100 to $120.

L*Space makes its bikinis with European fabrics at a local factory. They’re stored, packed and shipped from L*Space’s 1,900-square-foot headquarters to retailers such as The Closet in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach and Huntington Surf and Sport.

Wise started L*Space in 1997. The Ohio native said she fell in love with the beach after moving to Florida in the 1980s. She loved bikinis so much that she started making them.

When others started asking her to make sets for them, Wise said she decided to turn her hobby into a business.

She moved to OC to start her company because of the area’s prominence in surfwear and swimsuits.

“I settled in Orange County to put myself in the heart of where all of the competition was. So far it’s paid off,” Wise said.

Earlier this month, L*Space was named Women’s Swim Brand of the Year for the 2007 Surf Industry Manufacturers Association Image Awards.

Wise said the recognition helps boost the company’s image, along with media attention. L*Space’s bikinis recently were in Swimsuit Illustrated, InStyle and Lucky, she said.

Diaz, Lohan and other celebrity wearers help generate business, Wise said.

Last week, L*Space gave away bikinis at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards’ gift suite in Los Angeles.

This summer, L*Space plans to move to a 3,000-square-foot building in Lake Forest. Plans for loungewear (think Juicy Couture or Michael Stars) are in the works, Wise said.


Makeup Move

Makeup.com Ltd. is calling Orange County home.

The online cosmetic retailer, which sells makeup, perfume and body products, has moved its headquarters from Vancouver, British Columbia, to a 2,500-square-foot office in Newport Beach.

Gene Rook, Makeup.com’s president, said the company moved here to be closer to cosmetics makers, including Costa Mesa-based Urban Decay LLC, Los Alamitos’ Mor Cosmetics Inc. and Irvine-based Too Faced Cosmetics Inc.

The new headquarters also helps promote the company’s image, he said.

“We feel that our Web site emulates the high-end, sophisticated image of Orange County,” Rook said.

Makeup.com started selling cosmetics in 2005 and went public last year, Rook said. The company trades on the low-profile Bulletin Board exchange.

It had $400,000 in sales in the first quarter. Makeup.com has four workers in Newport Beach and several more at a 200,000-square-foot warehouse in Seattle, Rook said.

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