Carol Dobbs sews, paints, tie dyes, and runs the specialty boutique C Dobbs in Newport Beach.
In a nutshell, she’s the type who doesn’t sit still.
So, when the pandemic hit last year, she didn’t just close her store at Corona del Mar Plaza and catch up on Netflix for a few weeks. Instead, she started her own apparel line and also has plans now to ramp in-store customization services this year.
And when the death of George Floyd moved the nation to speak out against racial injustice, Dobbs and others started an organization in Orange County focused on driving home that dialogue and effort locally.
Dobbs is a retail veteran who has ridden the industry’s waves of change, perhaps making her more hardened for all that occurred last year.
“When COVID hit and we had to close almost three months, I was pondering what do I do? I have this background of creativity and I’d always wanted to get into my own [apparel] line but I’ve always been so busy. Being at home, eating everything out of the refrigerator, I thought, ‘Do something constructive’ and I started buying fabric and changing things up.”
Reinvigoration
That was the start of Dobbs’ namesake apparel line she sells in her store. Today, the C Dobbs line includes plenty of tie-dye and work-from-home separates, such as jogger sets and embellished tops she hand sews at home or in-between helping customers at the store.
The moves are part of a reinvigoration she has in the business as she steers it through the next phase of change in retail.
When Dobbs left her native Trinidad and Tobago to come Stateside in the early ’80s, retail looked a lot different.
She worked at Nordstrom for more than a decade, starting off as a stock associate and working her way up to managing a store, learning skills from what was once considered to be one of the standards for retail customer service and quality product.
When Dobbs tired of retail, she took a turn into medical sales, doing that for about a decade before eight years ago taking the leap to go into business for herself with a friend.
Together, the pair opened the boutique Carol Rachelle and they ran that store until 2016, when Dobbs decided to strike out on her own with C Dobbs.
The specialty boutique, with price points ranging from $60 to $1,000 and the sweet spot right around $200, has a focus on European and local designers across men’s and women’s apparel, jewelry, accessories and footwear.
It’s a unique merchandise assortment within Irvine Co.’s Corona del Mar Plaza, a retail center just down the street from Fashion Island. The plaza is home to national retail names such as White House Black Market, Tommy Bahama and Chico’s, as well as Gulfstream restaurant.
“I’ve always wanted to have my own business since I was a little girl, so I opened a boutique in a challenging time,” Dobbs said.
“I’ve had lots of challenges in retail. Retail has taken a nosedive when it comes to competing with the internet, but I feel that things are going to change.”
Bankruptcies spurred by the internet’s rise and other shifts in consumer tastes have been the death knell for a lot of large chains, but Dobbs sees specialty as having a unique edge.
“There’s room for small boutiques now with stories and good customer service,” she said. “People want something unique and different and I think we still have a clientele that wants that and that we need to tap into.”
Specialty’s Advantage
C Dobbs seems an anomaly within the larger retail landscape, with the physical store generating most of the revenue and online very little.
Dobbs has a modest presence on social media, noting it’s a full-time job and she’ll eventually find the right person to build the store’s following there.
Instead, much of her efforts are focused on fueling what to do in real life as opposed to digital.
She’s continuing to expand the C Dobbs apparel line; last week showing off a nautical-inspired button detailing she added (by hand; she doesn’t own a sewing machine) on the shoulders of white T-shirts, in addition to a custom design she created for a customer coming into the store that day.
She said this year she’ll add a seamstress in the store, an on-demand customization component for her clientele.
It’s a move many brands had taken pre-COVID. Louis Vuitton’s South Coast Plaza boutique being an example locally of the trend, with its on-site atelier, its first in the U.S., as brands look to go deeper into the personalization trend.
“There’s customers who come in and say ‘Can you make this for me? Can you make that for me?’ So I thought, ‘I’ll start working with my customers and customizing their design with them,’” Dobbs said. “That’s where I want to go with this business, where people have a personal touch of their own.”
She also said quality will continue to be a focus, an edge she said most specialty stores will have over department stores and chains that, in more recent years, have competed more on price than anything else.
“I’ve seen quality over the years in fashion decline. You can still get your designer-made clothing, but I’ve seen the big stores that had status, their merchandise has declined, and it stems from the competition,” Dobbs said. “They had to compete, so they lowered their standards and that’s sad. They need to get back to quality again.”
Dobbs, overall, said she is optimistic about business. She points to the Biden administration and the push for Made in America, which she said, for the retail industry, could prove to be a boon for small businesses such as her own.
Community and Dialogue
Dobbs also holds a positive outlook on another front.
She’s part of a founding group that started an organization called Bleed the Same, following the death of George Floyd.
The group is focused on ensuring the conversations around racial injustice and systemic racism continue and also help lead to real solutions.
“Before COVID got so crazy, we would have meetings at people’s homes and share about racial issues and share about systemic racism to try and get Orange County, Newport Beach people aware that this exists,” she said of the group’s goal.
“We meet and we talk about what can we do to make change? How can we help kids, minorities, in school? How can we help with police reform? So, we’ve been brainstorming.”
Others from the community that are part of what Dobbs called Bleed the Same’s core team include Christian Mungai, community development pastor at Mariners Church in Irvine; Keith Hill, pastor at Mariners Church in Santa Ana; Muriu Makumi, pastor and life groups director at Mariners Church; author, speaker and teacher Jean Hastings Ardell; retired pro baseball player Dan Ardell; Jean Snowden; and Aimee Wing.
Dobbs said the responses from the community have been mixed.
“We have had people who were saddened and never knew it existed that Black people go through so much pain,” she said. “We’ve had people a little resistant saying ‘Oh, the Black Lives movement. There’s violence. I don’t want to get involved.’ We’ve had people say ‘yes, sign me up.’”
The group’s already made strides, with about a dozen meetings so far that have reached nearly 80 people through these conversations. Dobbs said there’s consideration of registering the group now as an official nonprofit.
“We’re not religious. We’re not political. We’re just humanitarians,” she said. “How can we heal the hearts of people and since what happened in the Capitol, I think that has made people more motivated like, ‘We’ve got to something. This place is going crazy.’”
Teaching Opportunity
A couple weeks ago, Dobbs had a young woman visit her store, eager to know more about Dobbs’ designs and inquiring why she didn’t teach others her skills. The question got the wheels turning in Dobbs’ head and, in the vein of Bleed the Same’s mission, she said once the pandemic is under control, she wants to bring inner-city kids or others into the store to teach them design skills, create their own pieces and then sell them in the store.
“I’m very optimistic. As a Black woman, I have Black nephews and Black nieces and when I look at the new administration, they can see their faces. They can see that there’s hope that one of these days they could be president, or they could have a position in government. They can see what America looks like. We’re a melting pot of all different races. That is hope for me,” she said.
Dobbs acknowledges there will be hurdles both at the social level and also at the business level, where retail remains challenged, but she ultimately feels an overall renewed energy.
“I feel like I’ve gotten a new vision,” she said, “and that’s what I’m excited about.”
