When you are Sarah Jessica Parker, world famous star of HBO’s “Sex and the City” series, you are known for your sense of fashion and can have almost any designer at your beck and call. So when she decided to star her own fashion line she went the complete opposite direction and produced a line that had a price tag below $10 for each and every item.
Who would be the chosen ones to help her roll out her line? Well, she turned to a couple of guys known as Steve and Barry. Also known as Steve Shore and Barry Prevor, a couple of guys from Long Island who just happen to have built one of the fastest growing empires of fashion in the country and they do it by selling clothes at rock bottom prices.
Every store, every item is less than $10. You would be hard pressed to find prices cheaper than that at Old Navy, the Gap or even your standard mass market retailers such as Wal-Mart of Target. Steve and Barry have them beat by a mile.
Keeping prices low is not only a passion with Steve and Barry, but it is a mission. They don’t advertise, they don’t need to. They do, however, make smart decision about collaborating with celebrities to create their lines and find ways to promote them. Venus Williams, the world famous tennis star, even wears her $10 shoes when she hits the court.
“Fashion is not a luxury” is a philosophy that Steve and Barry live by. They believe families can save thousands of dollars a year by shopping at their stores. In this day and age with prices always rising, being able to buy your clothes at reasonable prices allows you to continue to combat the cost of rising food and gas prices with the extra money in your pocket.
Steve and Barry are honest about the prices their clothes cost to make. If it cost less than $1 to manufacture a pair of jeans, they don’t see the point in trying to sell them for hundreds of times that price. They know they can sell it for $9 and make their profits on the volume of sales versus the retail price of the sale.
They use a world wide network of production facilities in over 20 countries. Monitoring their vendors to make sure they are treating their employees in an appropriate manner.
“It is about something real,” Prevor said. “This is about listening to customers and responding to their demands and they come in and they say, this is a great idea, why isn’t anyone doing that?”
How did they start out? Well for one, they have had a friendship since childhood. Prevor sodl tshirts in college at the flea markets for just $1. In the 80’s they opened their first store and begain selling the licensed collegiate gear for prices lower than the bookstore on campus. In the 90’s they branches out to other colleges but the big change happened 2 years ago.
It started with shoes and kids wanting shoes that were costing in the range of $100 and up. They teamed up with the NBA star Stephan Marbury to create the Starbury.
In order to save those dollars usually spend on traditional advertising, they decided that the backs of celebrities would work well as non traditional billboards.
Apparently it has worked as Steve and Barry now have more than 260 stores and are on a continued upward trend of growth. Even their headquarters in Long Island reflect their desire to keep things on a low cost basis. Even when they travel they fly coach and stay at cheap hotels.
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Good luck with the contest. Hope we learn something new.
