Metropark Heats Up The Gen Y Market
Founder of teen retailer grows with customers into a new retail concept for more sophisticated tastes.
Susan Fishman

Metropark’s store at Irvine Spectrum in Irvine, California. The company was co-founded by Hot Topic founder Orv Madden, along with Lawrence Tanenbaum and former Hot Topic CFO Jay Johnson.

Former telecom industry entrepreneur Lawrence Tanenbaum co-founded the company with Orv Madden (who founded the teen retail concept, Hot Topic) and former Hot Topic CFO Jay Johnson in the summer of 2003. The trio developed the Metropark business plan around a large segment of the population that was graduating out of the teen stores, such as Hot Topic and American Eagle Outfitters. According to U.S. Census data, the Gen-Y age group is expected to grow by roughly 10 percent over the next 10 years, from about 56 to 62 million, whereas the teen segment is projected to stay flat.

“This huge segment of the population has grown older and more sophisticated and are now out in the work force and starting to get into some of the social aspects of being an adult and caring more about their appearance,” notes Tanenbaum. “So we felt that a specialty concept targeting that age group would be well-received based on the lifestyle interest and the taste level of this customer. And we felt there was really nothing else in the malls, other than a department store like Nordstrom or Bloomingdales, which carries some of the better brands, that caters to them.”

Inside Metropark. The retailer has opened 10 stores in high end shopping centers and plans to expand in centers that have sales per square foot upwards of $450.

Metropark currently has 10 stores open with 15 additional locations planned for 2006. In addition to new stores in California, Nevada, Atlanta, and Portland, the company will open a second location in Las Vegas, and is planning new stores in Houston, Dallas, Austin and along the East Coast. The company operates stores in seven premier regional malls in California and Minneapolis, including Glendale Galleria in Glendale, Galleria at Tyler in Riverside, The Oaks in Thousand Oaks, Valley Fair in Santa Clara, Oakridge in San Jose, The Irvine Spectrum Center in Irvine and the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

The company seeks out highly productive centers, those with sales upwards of $450 per square foot, that offer co-tenancy that supports the store’s price point, including better contemporary specialty stores as well as better department stores, such as Nordstrom or Bloomingdales.

“Any center that can offer us those tenants is probably going to have the other physical attributes and amenities we would be looking for,” Tanenbaum says.

The ideal location is a mall with a rich trade area and a dense population of 20 to 30-year-old, upwardly mobile, single professionals. Locations near large universities are also popular.

“The traditional lifestyle center is probably not appropriate for us at this point,” adds Tanenbaum, “given the kind of merchants that are generally going in there, such as the more Missy oriented apparel stores like Talbots, J. Jill and Coldwater Creek. Our customer is much faster in terms of their fashion orientation.”

Designed by Detroit-based John Greenberg & Associates (JGA), the stores reflect strong influences from the most stylish hotels, clubs, bars and street boutiques in the country. Customers experience a bright, festive mannequin display and stimulating visual details, featuring stained concrete and distressed wood floors juxtaposed by rich luminous resin fixtures in green and orange.

“We tried to create a much more sophisticated and unique street boutique environment that didn’t look or feel like anything else in the mall today,” says Tanenbaum. “ We want our customers to feel like they literally stepped out of the mall and into an authentic street boutique.”

Around 2,700 to 3,000 square feet, each Metropark store showcases a custom audio-visual presentation with an emphasis on current music, fashion and art content. Metropark is part store, part club, where customers enjoy upbeat music videos viewable on large plasma screens throughout the store as well as live DJ performances on weekends, art exhibits and fashion shows. Customers can also relax in the store’s lounge, where they can sip energy drinks and listen to premier DJs performing live on weekends and at invite-only, after-hours events.

With a vision of reaching 300 or more stores, Metropark executives believe that the concept is national in scope and will be relevant to every major market in the U.S.

“We’re targeting a very important customer for mall owners that they could be losing to alternative shopping destinations, like street boutiques and lifestyle centers,” notes Tanenbaum. “Right now there really are very few in-line stores, particularly in the apparel world, that appeal to this profile customer. So we think we’re bringing something fresh and unique and very much needed to continue to make malls credible with this young tastemaker customer.”