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Naked Wardrobe Moves Past Fast Fashion Label

Women’s clothing brand Naked Wardrobe, based in Northridge, is enjoying a strong start to the year after inking wholesale deals to place its products in department stores Bloomingdales, Macy’s and Nordstrom. Naked Wardrobe specializes in basic, form-fitting garments and strives to be inclusive and body-positive for all women. For founders and Valley-native sisters Shideh, Shida and Shirin Kaviani, the wholesale contracts represent a transition from online fast fashion to physical retail. This is the first time their clothes will be sold in brick-and-mortar stores. “We’ve been very deliberate and thoughtful about how we want to scale the business,” Shideh Kaviani told the Business Journal via email. “We started meeting with different retailers this summer, and it was critical that we found the right partners.” Expanding into wholesale, she added, presented a well-timed opportunity to extend the brand’s footprint, diversify its revenue stream and introduce its products to a broader audience. The Kaviani sisters founded Naked Wardrobe out of their parents’ house in Woodland Hills in 2012, buying wholesale clothing online, marking it up reasonably and reselling it on their website for less than other retailers. The business model was simple and immediately successful — the brand grossed more than $1 million in revenue that first year. Soon thereafter, the sisters moved the company to an office space in Chatsworth and began designing their own clothing. The company grew at a clip of about 40 percent each subsequent year. Naked Wardrobe now has more than 60 employees, including design and production staff, customer service representatives, models, photographers, developers, editors and more. In 2017, it moved to a Northridge facility large enough to house its scaled-up operations and include a product storage warehouse. Unique to Naked Wardrobe’s management style is the sibling dynamic. Shideh Kaviani serves as president, overseeing design and manufacturing of the company’s products based on fashion trends; Shirin Kaviani is the chief executive and head of development, leveraging her background in tech to manage website design and function, social media integration and analytics; and Shida Kaviani is vice president, managing brand strategy, media relations and marketing. “We balance one another, we continue to learn from each other and what it takes to be successful,” Shida Kaviani said. “When it comes down to asking for help, we can always lean on each other.” Celebrity co-signs and influencer marketing have been huge in raising brand awareness and customer interest early in the company’s life. Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé and more have appeared publicly and on social media wearing Naked Wardrobe pieces. “We recognized very early on the power social media had on growing a brand, and we utilized Instagram to introduce our brand to the world,” Shida Kaviani said. “We are fortunate to have some of the most influential people on Instagram wearing our brand organically.” The company currently boasts more than 1.4 million followers on Instagram. Even before signing the distribution deals, 2019 was a banner year for Naked Wardrobe. The company launched two in-house clothing lines —The Statement Collection, comprising eye-popping pieces like patterned blazer jackets to compliment the brand’s basics; and Baby Mama, a maternity line. It also hosted its first pop-up store on Melrose Avenue in L.A.’s Fairfax District. “(That) experience inspired us to pursue the idea of wholesaling to reputable department stores,” Shida Kaviani said. Added Shirin Kaviani: “We plan to really focus on experiential and pop-ups in 2020 to further expand Naked Wardrobe’s footprints into physical spaces. Our pop-up in Los Angeles this year was a huge success as we were consistently selling out of products. We definitely plan to bring this model to other cities across the country.” According to Shideh Kaviani, Naked Wardrobe will also look to expand its presence in the global market in 2020. “Right now, 80 percent of our customers are U.S. based,” she said. “We’ll be putting a focus on expanding internationally.”

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