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RETAIL PROFILE
Distinctive retail strategies and a constantly changing product assortment fuel the expansion of one mid-sized urban retailer.
Reinvention has been a never-ending staple in the evolving blueprint of mid-sized urban retailer Downtown Locker Room, which is expanding from the metro Washington, D.C., area into the Atlantic and Southeast regions.
Despite depressed times, the Hanover, MD-based urban fashion chain doubled from 20 to 40 stores in the past four years, undeterred by economic considerations, successfully riding the hip-hop train to profitability.
"When times are tough, customers often want to buy things to make them feel better," says Scott Collins, vice president of merchandising. "By contrast, when things are rocking and rolling economically, that doesn't necessarily play to our consumer. We feel if we put the right product out there, economic conditions won't dictate our success."
That product has changed radically throughout the Downtown Locker Room's 21-year history. The retailer, with origins as a running apparel and footwear merchant, is a subsidiary of Levtran Enterprises, named after its founders, Rick Levin and Tony Trantas. Operating family laundry and liquor stores in the same inner-city Baltimore neighborhood, they joined forces as friends to open their first store in the area in 1984.
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