The Line — purveyors of that ultrachic, cool-girl lifestyle — is now bicoastal.
The e-tailer inked a deal for its first West Coast store, The Apartment by the Line in Los Angeles, at 8463 Melrose Place. The Los Angeles store, when it officially opens Friday, will join an existing store on Greene Street in Manhattan’s SoHo just as the company is set to celebrate two years in business.
“It was always our intention to have these brick-and-mortar locations in more than one city,” said cofounder and executive creative director Vanessa Traina Snow.
The company scouted locations in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles before stumbling upon the Melrose Place address, which is a second-floor retail space. It’s in line with the New York store, which is a third-floor apartment, and it’s in keeping with the residential quality the brand set out to achieve to merchandise the collection of fashion, home and beauty products it carries from brands such as Lemaire, Protagonist, Acne Studios and Rodin.
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The company also partnered with lines such as Atelier de Troupe on interior and exterior lighting and J.F. Chen for vintage and some newly designed furniture pieces that will be unique to the L.A. store.
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“For us it’s really important to have that physical location and experience with the customer because it’s not a traditional retail store,” Traina Snow said. “ And it really is based upon this discovery and experience, and with The Apartment it’s important for us to have this space to contextualize the product.”
Store expansion will continue in the coming years, although Traina Snow declined to go into specifics beyond saying future locations will be dictated by where the customer base is strongest based on data culled from The Line Web site.
The company has about 30 employees and in the summer expanded to a new warehouse space in Brooklyn. Fulfillment for Web orders had previously been done out of SoHo.
“When people have interaction with the [physical] space it converts the customer at a higher degree, so we’re hopeful with L.A. we’ll have larger customer acquisition,” she said.
The company projects revenue growth this year, but she declined to say how large the business is in terms of sales. The revenue growth isn’t surprising with the new store set to open and a home goods line, called Tenfold, that launches Thursday. Tenfold features washed linens, charcoal-infused terry towels, candleholders and ceramic pieces. Soft goods are priced from $38 to $1,178, while hard goods range from $28 to $168.
“For us it was important to tell this whole lifestyle story because we’re not just a fashion retailer,” Traina Snow said. “We sell fashion, home and beauty and it really encapsulates a lifestyle concept so we wanted to extend ourselves to express that with our own brand.”
The company likely won’t stop there and it’s the intention to eventually delve into other categories once Tenfold gets its legs, Traina Snow said.
“We’re in the process of identifying that and developing those brands so we’re not able to talk about everything that we’re working on,” she said. “Tenfold is really where the energy’s been focused.”