While many retailers are scaling backon their traditional physical store presence and turning to e-commerce as a way to save money, one online startup, specializing in traditional brand-name apparel, is moving in the opposite direction. Country Club Prep, a fashion boutique originally launched as an online enterprise, opened a brick-and-mortar store in Chevy Chase at 807 Euclid Ave.
“It’s been an extraordinary experience,” said Amanda Caldwell, the manager, referring to the store’s first few weeks in operation. “We’ve stayed busy, and people keep saying that our business fills the gap and is very much needed.”
Country Club Prep sells brands like Southern Proper, Southern Marsh, Smathers & Branson, State Traditions, Perlis, Johnnie-O, and Castaway Clothing, among many others. Matt Watson, an Atlanta-based co-owner of the business, said he wants the new shop to offer a lively shopping experience for the business’ spirited preppy attire.
“It’s going to be a fun place, not your stuffy old-man store where you can’t touch anything,” he said. “That kind of shopping experience is stale, and those kind of stores are dying.”
Watson defines preppy as all things traditional,
but by no means boring.
“It’s a lot of color. It’s tons of bowties, seersucker, madras, and a lot of fun,” Watson said. “Remember, we’re irreverently preppy and never ever stuffy.”
His original goal, he said, was to create “Zappos for prepsters,” referring to the extraordinary customer service, quality and creative approach to selling and marketing practiced by the internationally known footwear store.
The leap from law to fashion
Neither Watson, 32, nor his partner, Stephen Glasgow, 34, studied fashion or business in college. Both are 2007 graduates of the University of Virginia School of Law. They started their online-only preppy apparel store out of Watson’s basement in 2012, while both were still working for large law firms.
“I loved law school, but the reality of practice made me feel discouraged,” he said. “There were 1,400 attorneys in my firm, and I felt that it would be very hard to advance.”
Watson and Glasgow, who was also disillusioned about his career as a lawyer, put their heads together in search of a business idea. “We asked ourselves, what do we know? ... We realized that one thing we both knew was preppy clothes,” Watson said.
In March 2012, the online retail business Country Club Prep was launched out of Watson’s house in Atlanta with 17 brands of clothing. In its first year, it grew 600 percent. After 18 months, Watson and Glasgow got their first warehouse. In August, they opened their first physical store in their alma mater town of Charlottesville, Virginia.
While developing their online business and thinking of a possible second brick-and-mortar location, Watson and Glasgow met Jolene Dawkins, a Lexingtonian with decades of experience in retail, who later became their employee.
“We met her socially, and she became a great source for us in making a decision to expand into Lexington,” said Watson.
Dawkins explained that a significant segment of the Lexington population had the potential to become devoted clientele.
“Lexington was appealing to [Watson and Glasgow] because it’s a very traditional community with a very unique equestrian and bourbon culture,” she said.
Dawkins, who was also instrumental in securing the store’s Chevy Chase location, said that it provides a perfect mix of people and surrounding businesses.
“In addition, it’s close to the university,” said Dawkins, who is now a retail director for the store.
Watson explained that proximity to the University of Kentucky campus is crucial because “if you make students your customers, they’ll be your customers for life.”
Prepped to grow
While Charlottesville’s Country Club Prep is the company’s flagship, the Lexington location is even more important for the company, Watson said.
“It will serve as a blueprint, a model for all future brick-and-mortar stores,” Watson said. After opening two stores in four months, the preppy retailers plan to continue expanding into more college and resort towns.
“By the end of 2015, we are going to open two more stores,” said Watson, who has been working on his business full-time since January. “We want every store to have a local character, but lots of things, like interior colors, fixtures, the whole atmosphere of the place, will be similar to what we come up with in our Lexington location.”
The selection online presently includes 157 brands; in Lexington store, there are 30, with 10 or 15 more coming by March.
Christy Martin, who stopped by Country Club Prep with her daughters Laurelei, 9, and Bella, 12, recently, said that all three of them enjoyed exploring the store.
“It’s fun, it’s different, and it has more Southern traditional clothes than any other place that I know of,” she said.
Despite his company’s big success, Watson is still making only half of what he was making as an attorney, but he said he’s happy being a preppy clothes retailer. “We can see fruits of our labor,” he said. “We see happy customers every day, and it’s much more satisfying than being a part of a big machine, a giant law firm.”