A Moreno Valley couple is hitting their biggest venue again with their mobile fashion truck in hopes of fueling the same high-octane sales as their debut there a year ago.
Monday, Sept. 1, will be Out of My Kloset’s last day of the four-day weekend at the L.A. County Fair at Fairplex in Pomona.
Women of all ages and sizes from extra small to 3X can climb aboard the 24-foot-long 1989 Chevy side-step van to hunt for clothing, handbags, shoes and accessories. Complete with cabinets, racks, a dressing room and air conditioning, Kloset is a miniature store on wheels in every sense, handling 15 customers at a time. Retail prices are capped at $60.
Because sales have increased 25 percent since August 2013, husband-and-wife owners Sheneka Gordon, 41, and Jeremy May, 43, have added gifts, candles, keychains, women’s watches and a consulting travel service from her years of industry expertise. Kloset will soon incorporate handmade soap, bath bombs, lotions, men’s accessories, wallets and T-shirts.
May and Gordon, who both have full-time jobs, thought the Inland Empire was ripe for an alternative to malls and online shopping. Kloset’s weekends are reserved for private events, girls’-night-out parties and corporate soirees, but the movable clothing feast relies mostly on farmers markets and street fairs.
Armed with its city business licenses and state seller’s permit, Kloset appears regularly on the first and third Saturday at the Hemet Farmers Market and the second and fourth Sunday at Galleria at Tyler Mall’s Farmers Market in Riverside.
“We’re looking at other locations, such as the wineries and expanding to Upland, San Diego, Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga, even franchising,” Gordon said.
She and May started Out of My Kloset online three years ago just as the fashion truck industry stepped on the gas in L.A. and other big cities. The vans rolled out everything from bikinis to men’s custom suits.
For many wannabe entrepreneurs, venturing from the Internet to a truck is the litmus test for the next step, a brick-and-mortar store, Gordon said.
Gordon, a member of the American Mobile Retail Association, said there are now six fashion trucks in the fledgling industry.
“Some owners are in their truck every day,” she said. “I thought it would be glamorous, but you have to be prepared to work. Because it’s really a lot of work.”
Contact the writer: llucas@pe.com, 951-368-9559
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