I live near the Irvine Spectrum and am at the shopping center a lot. This week, I happened to see workers putting up “coming soon” signs at the new DC store, scheduled to open this summer.
Many stores located near the DC location carry DC shoes and clothing, including Active, PacSun and Robert Wayne Footwear. Tilly’s, located in another wing of the shopping center, is also a big DC customer.
I asked DC Senior Vice President of Sales Mark Miller how DC will differentiate product for its own store and the others.
Mark said DC currently segments product for different retailers at the Spectrum and supports them in different ways. DC makes special products for Active, PacSun and Tilly’s that are exclusive to those stores. It also provides different in-store fixtures for each account so they can showcase DC products in a unique way that fits with their customers.
“We give each retailer a tremendous amount of support,” he said.
In the DC store, there will be some crossover of product with the other stores at the shopping center, but DC’s line is so big, it can’t all fit in a 2,500-square-foot space, Mark said. The idea is for the store to act as a showcase for the brand.
Mark said he isn’t worried about their being too much DC product in the marketplace.
While the Spectrum is a unique venue where action sports retailers are so close together, “In the real world of 300 million people in the U.S., we are just scratching the surface in delivering as much product as the consumer base wants from us,” he said. “Our sales are up which tells us our customers are selling DC products.”
