Lifestyle Brand Expansion, Tsabag Style

摘要

Breaking into new product categories. Setting up shop in China. It's all in a day's work for Hot Kiss as the brand seeks to entrench itself in the life of a certain fashion-conscious female that CEO Moshe Tsabag sees as quite universal. In a little less than eight years, Tsabag has built L.A.-based Hot Kiss into a lifestyle brand that is expanding in the United States and internationally. Raised in Israel and schooled in New York, Tsabag worked in the wholesale record business in New York before starting his apparel career almost 30 years ago in Los Angeles. After selling multiple apparel lines for seven years, in the late 1970s he hatched plans to start his own apparel company. Those plans culminated with the 1982 start-up of YES Clothing Co., which he took public in 1989 and then sold in 1995. Looking to launch a new fashion enterprise, in November 1996 he created Hot Kiss, a juniors brand that sells in department stores, from Nordstrom to Belk, and specialty stores, such as Hot Topic and Rampage. Hot Kiss' no-frills white headquarters building, situated unassumingly off an L.A. freeway in an industrial area, reveals little hint of the big moves the company is making. From his cozy office with a few Hot Kiss fashion posters on the wall behind his desk, Tsabag shared with Apparel some insights and plans.