South Coast Plaza didn’t allow any camping out for the opening of its two H & M; Hennes & Mauritz stores on April 12. The campers went to H & M;’s opening at the Irvine Spectrum Center the following day, when H & M; round two was scheduled to open at noon.
The first girl in line said she got there at 1:30p.m.,the previous day. By 9:30 a.m. the line to the new store,near Nordstrom,was backed up to the Giant Wheel.
The girls at the front of the line summed up their loyalty,cheap chic. The first 200 people in line also received goodies, such as T-shirts and gift cards.
“It totally exceeded our expectations in both people and sales,” said Lisa Sandberg, spokeswoman for H & M.;
Mall officials counted 400 people in line by 11 a.m. and by the time the store opened, 650.
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H & M; at Irvine Spectrum: 650 people waited in line for store opening |
The H & M; frenzy first began April 12 at South Coast Plaza, where H & M; opened two stores. Officials counted 4,724 visitors to both the Bear and Bristol street stores by 4 p.m. on that day.
H & M; also passed out its glossy fashion magazine it publishes four times a year.
Nexxt!
Loehmann Inc.’s Nexxt, a young women’s designer boutique, has opened on the Tustin side of The Market Place near Old Navy. The store is a sister store to Loehmann’s department store on the Irvine side of the mall.
Mealtime
MealMakers, a meal preparation store, opened at The Crossroads in Irvine. Customers can order meals online or call the store to reserve a pickup time. Meal entrees come in regular, “lite” and classic. Catherine Hwang is owner of the Irvine MealMakers, a franchise based in St. Louis.
Mary’s Handbags
Handbag designer Mary Frances Shaffer will be appearing at Bloomingdale’s at Fashion Island for the reopening of the handbag department, which has been undergoing a makeover.
Shaffer, who heads Mary Frances Accessories, will unveil her summer collection. Her celebrity clients include Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Kelly Clarkson and Nelly Furtado.
Retailers Open
National retailers have begun opening at Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle, an urban living development that mixes homes, retail and business.
El Torito Grill, Kelly’s Coffee and Fudge Factory, Subway and Juice It Up have recently opened there.
Clippings
Four Sport Clips haircutting stores for men and boys are coming to Orange County in the next few months. Orange-based Wellington Franchising Systems, the area developer for Sport Clips in OC, the Inland Empire and Southern Nevada, is opening the stores.
Wellington opened its first Sport Clips in Huntington Beach in December and its second in Irvine in January. By the end of this year, Sport Clips is planning to open at least 10 stores in OC.
The latest Sport Clips are opening in Santa Ana at the Bristol Center and in Cypress at Cypress East Shopping Center.
Another will open in Lake Forest at The Arbor and the fourth will open at The District at Tustin Legacy.
Verizon’s Remodel
Verizon Wireless is debuting its new store remodel in Lake Forest. The store’s new design was based on customer surveys. Customers said they wanted products pulled off the wall, according to Verizon. Now, all the products are in the center of the store, where people can try them out.
Verizon said customer wait time is down nearly 30% with the new design. Customers also are getting out of the store quicker. Verizon Wireless is opening or retrofitting about 50 stores with the design this year through 2008.
Ward’s Top
Tuttle-Click Automotive Group, based in Irvine, was No. 23 on Ward’s Auto Dealer’s top 25 dealer groups for online sales. Tuttle-Click, the only local dealer group on the list, sold 1,677 new autos and 470 used autos online. The top dealer group, Ft. Lauderdale-based AutoNation Inc., sold 131,510 new and used autos online.
AutoNation is a substantially larger group, with about 330 dealers. Tuttle-Click has about 14.
For Ward’s top 100 individual “e-dealers,” only three OC dealers were on the list.
Those were AutoNation’s Power Toyota of Irvine, which sold 1,766 new autos and 345 used autos online; House of Imports, a Buena Park Mercedes-Benz dealer, which sold 1,269 new autos and 519 used; and Power Honda Costa Mesa, which sold 810 new and 253 used.
The top e-dealer was Kellogg, Idaho-based Dave Smith Motors, which sold 6,771 new autos and 1,254 used autos online. Bob Howard Automotive, based in Oklahoma City, sold the most used autos online, 4,078.
