On its way to building a 1,000-plus-store retail network, fast-growing Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., last week said it plans to move its headquarters late next year into a 480,000-square-foot office and distribution center to be built about three miles from its existing facility in Anaheim.
The company last week acquired for $12.1 million a 19-acre parcel from Boeing North American Fitness Inc. to be the site of the new three-story complex that will include 180,000 square feet of office space and 300,000 square feet devoted to distribution,enough to serve 1,200 stores.
“The warehouse facility is doubling and the office space is tripling,” said Carl Womack, the company’s senior vice president and CFO.
The company’s current Anaheim headquarters and distribution center eventually will be subleased, Womack said.
Pacific Sunwear, which operates a chain of mall-based specialty apparel stores, is more than halfway to its goal of 1,000 stores by 2003, Womack.
“We expect to grow at a rate of roughly 150 stores a year,” he said.
By the time the company moves into the new headquarters in December 2001, Pacific Sunwear expects to have about 300 corporate employees, up from 225 today, Womack said. The retailer counts 1,800 employees company-wide.
Pacific Sunwear operates 559 stores, with about 80% of those under the beach-oriented Pacific Sunwear name and the rest under d.e.m.o., the company’s urban streetwear retail stores.
The company has looked into expanding globally, and opened a store in Puerto Rico in the summer, Womack said. But Pacific Sunwear has no plans for stores outside the U.S. for at least two years, he said.
The retailer recently revamped its young men’s division under Bill Rosenbaum, the company’s vice president of merchandising who comes from Kmart Corp. and previously Abercrombie & Fitch Co. Rosenbaum succeeded Bob Sayre, who left in the spring; Rosenbaum subsequently replaced the entire team.
“(The men’s division) hadn’t done well in the year leading up to Bob leaving,” Womack said.
The youth-oriented retailer of beach and sportswear ranked No. 90 on Fortune magazine’s annual fastest-growing companies list with a 41% annual revenue growth,to $468 million,and 55% earnings per share growth for the past three years. It was No. 54 on Business Week’s Hot Growth Companies list.
The company reported net income of $7.4 million on sales of $132 million for the fiscal second quarter ended July 30. The stock price fell 24 points in May and June this year as the firm reported a series of same-store sales declines, but the shares have picked up in recent weeks, going from a Sept. 5 low of 12 3/4 to the 19 level last week.
The new building is being designed by architects DeRevere & Associates; interior design is by H. Hendy Associates, both of Irvine. Oltmans Construction in Whittier was hired for the construction. n
