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CUSTO BARCELONA FLOURISHES IN U.S., EXPANDS WORLDWIDE

By Dees Stribling

The humble T-shirt has been very good to Custodio and David Dalmau, two fashion-designing brothers from Spain. Inspired by colorful T-shirt designs they saw roughly 30 years ago in California, the Dalmaus went on to make their mark with some brightly patterned, intricately designed shirts.

Those bright designs now form the core of an expanding retail business in Europe, the United States and elsewhere. “What we offer is a fun, young alternative to the standard American T-shirt-and-jeans look,” said Tony Brand, U.S. retail director for Custo Barcelona, the brand founded by the brothers.

The brothers’ creations, which went beyond T-shirts into other kinds of casual wear, first made their way onto the shelves of upper-end department stores in Europe, Asia and the U.S. Then, in 1996, the Dalmaus founded the Custo Barcelona brand, which they decided to launch in the U.S. rather than their own country. Their thinking at the time was that Americans were more open than Europeans to the kinds of colorful designs they specialize in.

It was an astute decision. The Custo Barcelona brand caught the attention of Hollywood stylists, movie directors and costume designers, and soon their work was draped on some highly visible movie stars. Demand for the designs allowed the Dalmaus to become retailers as well. In their hometown of Barcelona in 2001, they opened the first Custo Barcelona store. Now there are 34 Custo Barcelona stores worldwide.

Most of the stores are in Europe — 14 in Spain and four each in France and Italy. Outside Spain, the U.S. has the most units, with seven on the mainland and one in Puerto Rico. “Custo Barcelona’s one of a handful of Spanish fashion retailers that have established a beachhead in the United States recently,” said George Whalin, president of San Marcos, Calif.-based Retail Management Consultants, which does not do business with Custo Barcelona. “Mango and Zara are two others, but actually they target somewhat different markets.” Though these two are by no means discounters, their lines tend to be less expensive than Custo Barcelona’s, he says. (Custo’s women’s shirts, for instance, run from about $100-$200). Zara especially has been a pioneer in Europe’s “fast fashion” movement that unveils new designs as quickly as every few weeks, instead of the months typical in the fashion industry.

Custo Barcelona is more of a standard upscale boutique, however, and now that it has established itself in the U.S., it is looking to expand. In early planning, the retailer had anticipated that it would open as many as 20 U.S. stores by now, but things have not moved quite that quickly. “After Custo Barcelona rolled out its first wave of stores in the United States in 2004 and 2005, it decided to take some time to get a feeling for operating in this country,” said Joshua Strauss, a managing director at New York City-based Robert K. Futterman & Associates, which represents the Spanish clothier in U.S. site selection. “It’s gone through its growing pains and soon will start its second wave of growth.”

Tony Brand confirms the retailer’s continued ambitions in America. “We’re definitely looking for additional places to open in the U.S.,” he said. “I expect that within the next year we’ll have an additional three or four stores.” According to Brand, the retailer is looking for locations in shopping centers as well as “great spots on key shopping streets,” though at the moment only its New York store, on Broome Street in the SoHo district of Manhattan, is on a shopping street. In SoHo Custo Barcelona is at home among the high-end shops, galleries and studios of one of the more expensive neighborhoods of the city. A second New York shop, in a small building Custo Barcelona owns on Columbus Avenue on the city’s Upper West Side, would also be a shopping street location, but plans to open there have yet to be finalized.

Otherwise, Custo Barcelona’s American stores exist in upscale shopping centers: Bal Harbour Shops, North Miami Beach, Fla.; Beverly Center, Los Angeles; the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas; NorthPark Center, Dallas; Town Center at Boca Raton (Fla.); and Water Tower Place, Chicago.

For shopping center expansion, Custo Barcelona is looking “to place the label in high-volume, high-profile centers throughout the United States,” Strauss said, “but especially in the southern tier of states from California to Florida, since Custo Barcelona’s clothes have a warm-weather appeal.”

None of the brand’s current stores are precisely alike in size, but all measure less than 3,000 square feet. “One of the things we’ve learned in the last year or so is an ideal size of the stores, based on our experience with the existing stores” said Strauss. “Not that any of the existing stores are doing badly. They’re all appropriate for their locations. But the most effective size seems to be 1,500 to 1,700 square feet.”

Small among U.S. Custo Barcelona shops is the one in Simon Property Group’s Forum Shops at Caesars, which comes in at slightly less than 1,000 square feet. Considerably larger is the 2,650 square feet the retailer took in NorthPark Center, an upscale regional mall measuring some 1.2 million square feet.

In each case Custo Barcelona is a small though brightly colored fish in a large pond. “Custo Barcelona chose NorthPark Center as one of the first few sites in its national expansion because it’s the premier retail destination in Dallas,” said Strauss. Yet another site-selection consideration in the Dallas lease, and one that will also hold true in future selections, is that Custo Barcelona wanted to locate in a good-looking shopping center, Strauss says. NorthPark fits the bill because it’s “known for its beauty, having won numerous architectural and design awards, which is heightened by the artwork that’s always on display throughout the property,” he said.

But the mall’s demographics are as impressive as its aesthetics. NorthPark boasts more than 14,300 households with an annual income exceeding $250,000 within a seven-mile radius. Moreover, the mall boasts a young demographic: The median age of mall shoppers is 39. This is in synch with Custo Barcelona’s target customer, Brand says. “In North America, our customers are about 80 percent women aged 25 to 50, with the rest [being] men aged 25 to 45,” he said.

Recent Custo Barcelona motifs with appeal to youth have included the use of psychedelic art, 19th-century prints and botanical illustrations. “We have fun T-shirts, of course, but also sexy dresses, nice coats and well-fitting denim,” said Brand. The lines are designed with youth in mind, but more than simply people under a certain age. Custo Barcelona is looking for customers with a certain turn of mind, as well, he said. “Demographics are important, but finding the right location for a Custo Barcelona store also involves understanding the psychographics of a market,” said Strauss. “It’s about finding a critical mass of creative, edgy customers — those who like to show off a little.”