Anything but predictable, Shea and Raan Parton are an entirely unique LA success story. The brothers behind Apolis have had an integral hand in the development of the city’s downtown Arts District while growing their own business there too. CFDA sat down with the duo to discuss what attracted them to the area, how it’s shaped their business, and how working smarter has worked for them.
Why did you decide to come to LA to grow your business?
Raan: We’re from Santa Barbara, but the real impetus to move to LA was manufacturing capabilities. We started with T-shirts that evolved into our supply-chain partnerships. LA was 100 percent a manufacturing decision and we’ve been in the Arts District for 11 years. We’ve always had an interest in this neighborhood from a commercial retail standpoint, but we didn’t actually open a store here until 2010.
As one of the trailblazers of the renaissance of LA’s Arts District, what originally brought you to the neighborhood?
Shea: It’s all this guy [pointing to Raan]. He has a culture-vulture pulse on emerging areas. It’s funny how many friends say, “We have this emerging neighborhood, what did you guys do to make the Arts District what it is?” If anyone thinks that there is a rulebook or formula to these neighborhoods, they are so naïve. There is so much that is out of your control.
Raan: Coming from Santa Barbara, you kind of have an allergic reaction to Los Angeles. We’re still two blocks from Skid Row but it doesn’t feel like that now. We’ve been broken into a number of times. We’ve been extracted at gunpoint by the police when they thought we were burglarizing our original studio. I liked that it was all blue collar, but there were no commercial-facing spaces at the time. It was all working artists who hadn’t been discovered yet. They were just producing.
Has the neighborhood shaped the way you’ve decided to grow the business?
Shea: When we look at our new store in SoHo – on the cusp of Chinatown, with less traffic than this neighborhood – it really opened our eyes to how big the world is. Look at the demographics of New York as far as how condensed it is, and you see something that’s an anomaly. The world is just much bigger than you can imagine. We’ve been really inspired by creating something that attracts people and that, on its own, can build some level of a movement.
Raan: Here, it still has a village feel where everyone knows each other in this specific pocket. It has been part of the personality that we’ve been able to develop for our brand. Ironically, niche is the new mainstream. Fringe retail and the programming that we’ve brought along with it allowed us to stay on the smaller, organic side but still have a significant global customer base that we’re tethered to digitally. People have the impression that we’re almost an underdog, which is the pedigree of this neighborhood.
Do you have a characteristically Californian customer?
Shea: We have a unique business where half is in one sku, and the other half is this metropolitan dude who is socially responsible. With our market bag, it’s a woman in middle America who shops at Whole Foods. It’s a good sense of diversity. We’re not so vulnerable to the hipster customer or a more mainstream one.
In doing so, you’ve managed to continue to grow the business?
Shea: We’ve learned from the Stussy founders, who have been incredible mentors to us, that if you want to build a long-term brand it has very little to do with growth and an exit strategy. It has everything to do with net income. If you’re not thoughtful about that, you’re not real with our job creation philosophy. It’s about longevity if you’re going to create sustainable job creation. On top of that, it’s a level of health where you just have more options and you can ultimately be in control.
Raan: The word sustainability gets thrown around a lot, but the ability to have a business that can stand on its own two feet and doesn’t need a weird uncle to cough up money every six months defines a discipline that’s really hard. There are all these opportunities in our industry to build the brand that may cost money but there’s no real return on investment tied.
How has being in LA helped you grown, in terms of the city’s manufacturing resources?
Shea: Early on, it was an unfortunate handicap, because we wanted to be so nimble that we were doing everything on our own. We quickly realized that if you don’t have full package supply chains, you can often work a lot harder than smarter, and you have too much liability when you have fit in mind. Raan says New York has a more pedigree mindset for how you go up in the food chain. LA is unique in that it just kind of rewards passion.
Raan: The manufacturing can be tricky here because the barrier to entry is much lower than anywhere else, and you can start learning more quickly. But there are a lot of hidden costs, too, and everything changes so quickly. We’re challenged with the kind of manufacturing that got us to a certain volume. And then, once we started doing a certain volume, we started doing things smarter. That took a lot of the guesswork and liability out of it.
Has it been hard to gain credibility as a brand out of Los Angeles?
Shea: The philosophy has evolved for us. We are so much more content with what success looks like. If you asked us years ago, success was just selling your brand at a huge multiple. We saw opportunity with mothers that have a single-story tin roof workshop making market bags, and it evolved to them owning their own piece of land, and six stories, 50,000 square foot facility, and we’re their number one purchaser. Ten years ago, brands were the hero in the sense of what was cool and they often prayed off of other’s insecurities. And now the customer is really the hero, so the ongoing gut check for all these brands at the whim of customers is how they are relating to people and if they are humble enough to listen. And that’s the staying power we’re seeing right now.
