NEW YORK — Caravan, as its name suggests, is about to take fashion on the road.
When the boutique opens in mid-June, a variety of labels will be displayed inside a remodeled truck that parks at different locations every weekend. The idea is to make shopping more novel and spontaneous, and to showcase hard-to-find brands and vintage pieces. A stylist will be on board to help customers find pieces that suit them or items that will work with what they already own.
“It will be like a sleek sophisticated department store without the attitude,” said Claudine Gumbel, who developed the concept with her husband, Brian.
She is one of the founders of Think PR and he is an account manager at Cisco Systems. But neither is giving up their day jobs, since this will be a Saturday-Sunday gig.
Gumbel said she toyed with the idea of opening a pop-up store, but then decided, “If something can be temporary, why can’t it be mobile?’
The couple bought a truck, installed air conditioning and heating, remade the interior to make it look more like a sleek store. Inside, there will be wallpapered walls, art exhibitions, a dressing area, videos screens playing runway shows, computers to check e-mail, a place to download music, an armoire filled with vintage pieces and racks of new merchandise. C, the company’s new private label consisting of five key travel pieces — slightly cropped black pants, a black blazer, gray blouse, white tank and black dress, will be also be sold. The truck can fit about 10 people at a time, and customers need to make appointments, Gumbel said.
Like any good publicist, Gumbel is savvy enough to hawk her clients at every turn, and she plans to feature some in Caravan. National Design Award-winner Yeohlee Teng, who is on board with the project, said, “Caravan is a fun, smart concept for New Yorkers who relish a novel experience. The mobile venue presents an opportunity for me to bring to the urban nomad design objects that are functional, fashionable and timely.”
In addition to clothes and accessories, art, gift items, beauty products and other pieces will be sold. Gumbel noted, “We won’t have tons of merchandise but it could have a totally different mix every day.”
Related Articles
You May Also Like
Information about various charities will be shared with shoppers and petitions will sometimes be available to sign.
There will also be a Web site selling clothing and accessories that goes online June 1, and the site will also alert consumers to where the truck will be parked.
For now, the company has been zoned for Manhattan, Long Island and New Jersey. Claudine Gumbel said there are certain parking restrictions — the truck can’t park in a metered space that takes coins, but can use the Muni-Meters or a parking lot.
The Gumbels expect their business to be profitable within eight months. “We had a very aggressive business plan for Think, too [which was profitable after three months],” Gumbel said.
First-year projected wholesale volume is $400,000, she said.
She and Think’s other co-founders, Reshma Patel and Rebecca Herman, have worked on a variety of pop-up stores, such as Fila that will open on Manhattan’s Lower East Side this week. With Caravan, Gumbel plans to stake out the Upper East and West Sides, with the occasional hop to NoLIta. She has also talked with private schools on the Upper East Side about potential collaborations such as camping out front on “Denim Day.”
Gumbel and her friends also have been rummaging through flea markets in Paris, London and Dublin for vintage finds. “There won’t be tons, but they will be things you can’t find anywhere else,” she said. “Our goal is for them to experience new things.”