Apparel industry veteran Ivan Spiers has signed a big Irvine lease for his n’Zania LLC.
N’Zania, which makes clothes featuring Disney characters and Teletubbies for trendy young teens and adults, leased a 92,433-square-foot building at 17622 Von Karman Ave. in Irvine.
The building is set to serve as n’Zania’s headquarters and warehouse, according to real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis Co.’s Newport Beach office.
Details about the move are sketchy. The publicity-shy Spiers, who owns and heads n’Zania, declined to comment.
Real estate sources said n’Zania is set to move to the new building in January. The company has several buildings in the area, including a 42,000-square-foot building at 16902 Von Karman.
The company is leasing the new building from MDD Partners II LP, a holding company of Mike Derderian, who owns Irvine-based Royalty Carpet Mills Inc.
Grubb & Ellis represented Derderian in the lease. Terms of the five-year lease weren’t disclosed.
Earlier this year, industry-based retailer Hot Topic Inc. started selling clothes from n’Zania featuring Teletubbies characters.
In 2002, Walt Disney Co. tapped n’Zania to come up with stylish, playful clothes featuring Disney characters for older buyers.
N’Zania also has produced clothes for older buyers featuring cartoon character Strawberry Shortcake.
Spiers’ involvement in the apparel industry goes deeper. A few years back, Spiers took over inventory and shipping for Costa Mesa-based Fly Industries LLC, maker of Black Flys sunglasses, which at the time was wrestling with financial woes.
“He really dug Black Flys out of a hole,” said Arty Hargrove, Fly’s national sales manager.
Fly has four stores and expects to do $7 million in sales this year, Hargrove said. The company has signed another four-year pact with n’Zania, he said.
“He’s a very good businessman,” Hargrove said of Spiers. “He’s very low-profile.”
Spiers used to be known for buying leftover, end-of-season clothes cheap and selling them to discount stores for a profit, said Tony Cherbak, an auditor specializing in retail for Deloitte & Touche LLP in Costa Mesa.
He’s since moved on to other ventures. In 2002, Spiers partnered with New York-based Windsong Allegiance Apparel Group LLC to buy Joe Boxer products sold at Kmart.
“He’s extremely successful, very smart,” said Dick Baker, president of Irvine-based Ocean Pacific Apparel Corp., a unit of New York-based Warnaco Group Inc. “He deals in multiple ventures. We’ve done some manufacturing with him.”
Spiers is quiet and likes to stay out of the spotlight, Baker said.
Through the years, Spiers has had a hand in various brands, including apparel maker Counter Culture, Ollie Pop Bubble Gum Co., a maker of bubble gum packaged with a toy skateboard, SixSixOne, a maker of cycling and motocross gear, and R & S; Trading Co.’s Sugar Cosmetics.
He’s also invested in stores, including outlets of Irvine-based Billabong USA and now-defunct Beyond the Beach.
In 2002, Spiers and Bruce Friedman, former chief operating officer at Irvine-based Gotcha International LP, bought Mr. Rags, a 100-plus mall-based chain that sold boys clothing. The chain filed bankruptcy liquidation a year later.
Spiers spent some time in the local news in 2003, but not for his business ventures.
Following the 2001 terrorist attacks, Spiers, a South African native, raised the flag of his home country along with U.S. and Canadian flags between his Laguna Beach home and that of his neighbor, Kevin Kroft, a Canadian movie producer.
Other neighbors complained the flags on 15-foot poles blocked their views. Spiers and Kroft eventually won the right to keep their flags.
