A majority of Russe’s stores are in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, according to its SEC filings.
What’s more, many West Coast companies have run into difficulties when they try to buy for a national audience, Fields said.
Rather, fast-growing Clothestime, Fields said, is going to increasingly give Russe a run for the money in terms of affordable fashion. Russe’s closest competitors, Fields said, aren’t the denim-focused Gap stores or the casual Wet Seal outlets, because neither carries the dressier date or work clothes offered at Russe and Rampage stores. They do a very, very good job on their visuals and presentation by putting together cohesive looks.”įields added, however, that continued growth will not be easy: Competition is stiff, and national expansion is always dicey. “When you walk into that store, you know you’re walking into a trendy store. “Bernie’s creativity and dynamics really brought Charlotte Russe to the next level,” said Barbara Fields, owner of Barbara Fields Buying Office and a 17-year veteran of the juniors apparel industry. In the first nine months of this fiscal year, through June 26, sales reached $126.4 million, up 34% from a year earlier. Using a system that tests high-fashion, slightly higher-priced clothes at Rampage, then volume-stocks the bestsellers at the more traditional Charlotte Russe, a team led by Chief Executive Bernard Zeichner has doubled sales since he and Connecticut-based investment group Saunders, Karp & Megrue bought the company in 1996. Proceeds from the sale of common stock, which the company estimates will be priced at $13 to $15, will be used to repay debt and for “general corporate purposes"-with a long-term goal of national expansion. The company also operates stores under the Rampage banner, which features less career clothing and more cutting-edge fashion, with most dresses from $38 to $68 and an average apparel sale of $29. The value-priced shopping mall retailer targets women in the 15-to-35 age group, selling dresses in the $20-to-$60 range, with an average apparel sale of $18.75-on the lower end of the industry’s price scale. At a time when companies with red ink, low sales and a dot-com on their names are all the stock market rage, San Diego-based retailer Charlotte Russe is planning to go public with healthy profit, gangbuster sales-and no immediate Internet strategy.Ĭharlotte Russe Holding Inc., three years after buying out the founding family and almost tripling the number of stores, valued the deal at as much as $46 million, according to papers filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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