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City Blue Chips
by INDEPENDENT STAFF
October 2004
One word came to mind when Joe Nadav first laid eyes upon the streets of Philadelphia in 1981: “Naked.”
Nadav, who emigrated from Israel in the 1970s, was in the jewelry and apparel businesses. He immediately recognized the city's desperate need. “Everyone was wearing work clothes, Army/Navy.” Nadav recalled. “I said, that city's naked.” Moved by his mission, Nadav opened up shop at 13th and Market streets.
From the windows, stacked high with blue Jordache jeans, Nadav could see City Hall. He named the store City Blue. Before City Blue opened on its second Christmas Day, a line had formed outside. One mother, angry that her son dragged her to Center City to meet his demand for designer denim, asked Nadav to open a store in the Cheltenham Mall.
So he did.
Then he opened a store in Germantown, then another at Third and Market streets. Twenty-three years later, he is clothing a second generation of teen and twenty-something shoppers with stores in Cleveland, Trenton, Atlantic City, the Cherry Hill Mall and Claymont, Delaware. The indisputable epicenter of the Nadav brothers' hundred-million dollar, 350 employee empire, however, is the rectangular strip bordered by Ninth, Twelfth, Market and Chestnut streets, where five different marquees adorn the street with silhouetted skylines, bubble letters and neon script. All this, and on only $300,000 a year of radio advertising. Philadelphia is no longer naked.
But why so many City Blues? And in such a small area?
“One way of advertising is to have a lot of storefronts, a lot of billboards,” theorized Wharton Business School professor Gerard Cachon. “It's sort of like having multiple commercials, back to back. You see it once, twice, three times, it makes a stronger impression.”
It also makes an impression when Allen Iverson shops here, which he—and most Philadelphia 76ers—apparently do often. The Dallas teams, when they come to Philadelphia, spend “25 to 30,000 dollars at our store,” Nadav boasted. “Sometimes, Iverson, when he comes in, we have to lock the door. The kids standing outside, Oh, Iverson shops at City Blue. City Blue in the air. Oh, City Blue, I got it from City Blue. They hear that name, over and over, it becomes—City Blue.” Employees at 1006 Market Street confirm that Iverson shops at their City Blue.
“Well, not just this City Blue,” one sales associate said. “He shops at all of them.” There are ten in Philadelphia. (Iverson's management could not be reached to comment on the shooting guard's shopping habits.)
So what's the city wearing this fall? According to Avi O., a manager at the 1106 Lady Blue (the women's companion chain Nadav opened four years ago), more of the same. More Rocawear, more Baby Phat, more Marithe et Francois Girbaud. Last year, he says, was good for women's clothing. This year was not.
“People are tired of what's out,” he declared. But he wasn't sure what would fill the void, except rapper Jay-Z's ubiquitous Rocawear label.
“Whatever they're gonna bring, it's gonna sell,” he sighed. “They bring ugly stuff, you buy the shit. For real.”
Taking a quick tour through the racks and stacks of the store, he pointed out what's hot. Circular racks of tank tops and tops and loads of denim fill the floor. Sweatsuits, which for some reason he doesn't understand are still worn to nightclubs, and leather jackets hang from the walls. Belts and purses are clustered near the register.
Lately Avi's been selling a lot of Atmosphere denim, two for $60, each with different details. Baby Phat's still good, but not the jeans. They're too plain. They're for white girls. He pointed out Girbaud's $78 Aviatrix jeans, styled after the men's model, adorned with strings and ties that hang off the sides. Akdmks is getting sexier—more colors, more details, and that's moving the product. The store's sold out of Air Force Ones, and G-Unit (made by Ecko and rapper 50 Cent's G-Unit Clothing Company) Reeboks are popular, too. Jay-Z's S.Carters are still selling, but that might just be their low price ($40) talking.
A month ago, Nadav traveled to the MAGIC trade show in Las Vegas. From over 4,000 brands on display, he selected just twenty-five. (He discontinued the unsuccessful City Blue brand some time ago.) “They have Puff Daddy, other celebrities, that sign autographs to lure you into booths,” he mused. “I took my son. He liked it.”
Yet he guards his fashion predictions closely. “It's not easy, but once you get the feel for it—I know which way to look.” Rappers, anyway, run the business. Last year, Jay-Z abruptly ended the lucrative athletic jersey business when he announced in a song that he was switching to “button-ups”—and proceeded to reap a tidy sum off Rocawear's $68 patterned button-up shirts. Enyce's since jumped on the long-sleeved, collared bandwagon, too. But now Avi's on the look-out for the new knee-high Reeboks that rapper Missy Elliot wore in a recent video clip. The shoes aren't out yet, but they're getting ready. When customers know something big is coming, they show up on the release date with the product number.
“That business, you have to be watching it,” said Nadav. “You fall asleep for a month, you get up, you say: Whoa. All of a sudden, you get three, four calls from a customer, which means that somebody put it on a video. And you have to jump on it, because it's not gonna last for long. Two months. Sometimes you have to wait three, four months to get an order filled. If you get lucky, the company has it in stock and you get them within a week or two.”
According to Avi, another City Blue will soon open on South Street. And he thinks it will make money, even with stores already on the 300 and 500 blocks.
“There could be another sixty stores,” he laughed. But he admitted missing the City Blue of five years ago, how it was when he first came to Philadelphia.
“It was more like friends. Now it's like a big factory.”
Nadav's next destination, the owner said, is Detroit.
“That city is kind of naked,” he smiled.
If the past is any indication, Motor City will be swathed in blue in no time.
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