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Home > Special Sections > Entrepreneurial > Clothing company CEO expands beyond
Web with Hopkins store
Clothing company CEO expands beyond Web with Hopkins
store
Posted: 1:26 pm Tue, August 2, 2011
By Nancy Crotti
Tags: Christine Sholl, George John, Jessica Bakken, Paul S. Gerot, Sherry Evans
Christine Sholl, who founded a company to sell apparel to larger teens, was inspired by friends
whose larger-size daughters had a hard time finding flattering clothing. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)
Twelve years after launching an online business to sell stylish plus-size clothing to teens and
women, Maple Grove-based b&lu Plus-Size On Trend is easing into bricks and mortar as well.
In early July b&lu opened a store at 1007 Main St. in Hopkins, offering clothing in sizes 14 to 30
or 1x to 5x, handmade jewelry and handbags. The 1,800-square-foot boutique is open one
weekend a month, as well as during city festivals and special events. The website, bandlu.com,
continues to operate, and the challenge will be integrating them, according to experts.
Customers and friends had pressured the owner, Christine Sholl, for years to open a local shop,
but she had never felt the need to do so until recently, when online competition increased in her
niche.
“I ship all over the world,” Sholl said. “But I need to focus more locally now because there is a
need in our local market.”
While studying marketing and management at Concordia University in St. Paul, Sholl wrote a
business plan for a company to sell attractive, well-fitting apparel for larger teens, inspired by
family friends whose larger-size daughters had a hard time finding flattering clothing.
B&lu offers tops, sweaters, dresses, skirts and pants in styles that are youthful, likely to be formfitting, and are worn and critiqued by models of every size the company carries before being
offered for sale. They are sewn exclusively for b&lu in California.
A professor told her it might work, and b&lu became one of three women’s plus-size online
retailers when it opened in 1999. (Sholl used the “b” from a childhood nickname, and “lu” from
her sister, Lucie, a former partner in the business.)
Originally based in a home in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood, b&lu moved to Sholl’s
Maple Grove home two years ago when Christine bought out Lucie, who was moving away.
Sholl now runs the business with two part-time staff members and plans to find warehouse space
in the Maple Grove area soon.
Sholl found her store through Sherry Evans, a friend and co-owner of women’s handbags,
accessories and jewelry franchise called Lillians Shop at 1023 Main St. in Hopkins. Evans had
invited b&lu to participate in Girls on the Town, a semiannual downtown Hopkins shopping
event last spring.
B&lu did so well that when Evans told Sholl about an upcoming vacancy a few doors away from
her store, Sholl snapped it up. She worked madly over three weeks to open the shop July 7, using
shelving, fixtures and racks she had accumulated from trade shows.
The shop is open the first Thursday through Saturday of the month, and customers are already
asking for more. Jessica Bakken, a 31-year-old group-home manager from Bloomington, has
been shopping b&lu online and through occasional sample sales for more than two years. She
even became a fit model for the company and said she was thrilled to learn about the store.
Shopping for stylish, well-fitting, plus-size clothing is always difficult, whether in person or
online, Bakken said. The clothing can be loud, boxy, dowdy or just plain ill-fitting.
“I love b&lu’s styles because everyone, not just plus-size, asks me where I got that,” Bakken
said. “If you buy something from Lane Bryant and Avenue, people know where you got it.”
How do online retailers perform upon opening bricks-and-mortar stores? It often depends on the
retailer’s intent, said George John, the General Mills/Paul S. Gerot chairman of marketing at the
University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
John compared selling plus-size clothing online to selling shoes online, and pointed to the
success of online shoe retailer Zappos. Even though shoppers generally try shoes on before
purchasing them, zappos.com has been a hit. B&lu, which has seen similar success on a smaller
scale, gives online shoppers a chart to compare their measurements with the clothing’s
measurements. B&lu has even adorned Hollywood stars such as Gabourey Sidibe and a cast
member from “High School Musical.”
“Let’s flip the problem; now that they’ve opened face to face, what’s the issue? You have a
storefront, you have employees and the variable costs go up,” John said. “Storefront businesses
are much more of a ‘Can I make the cash coming in balance the cash going out?’ The challenge
will be, is the storefront simply going to be an adjunct or a second line of business, or is the
storefront somehow going to be integrated with online?”
He pointed to the much larger Minnesota-based retailers Target and Best Buy, which allow
customers to order items online and pick them up in their stores. “It sounds wonderful in theory,
but in practice it’s hellaciously difficult, because the operational structure of a storefront is so
different, it’s very difficult to integrate those two,” John said. “The execution never seems to
match.”
Sholl predicted the outcome with her store will be different because so few of her online
customers are local. She has no plans to use the shop as a clearinghouse for returned online
merchandise, which John said also happens in these situations, but she will accept returns of
merchandise purchased online at the shop.
She is also pairing up with Lillians and another Hopkins shop, Corset Boutique & Personal
Styling Studio, 715 Main St., to hold special events and to cross-market.
Although the average age group of b&lu’s online customers is 25 to 35, visitors to the shop range
in age from teenagers to older women. Bakken said she considered two dresses before settling on
a purple knit with cap sleeves during b&lu’s opening weekend. “I am so glad she opened the
store,” she said. “I hope Minneapolis just embraces it.”
Sholl said she initially decided on the limited hours to make shopping at b&lu an event.
“I’m kind of testing the waters during these first couple months, and I’ve had customers ask me
to be open more,” Sholl said. “I definitely will be. I did get a great response to my first opening
weekend and so I have a feeling I’m going to be moving in that direction with more days, and
probably more extended evening hours, so people can come in after work.”
b&lu Plus-Size On Trend
Website: bandlu.com
Ownership: private
Location: Online based in Maple Grove; store at 1007 Main St., Hopkins
Purpose/product: Design and manufacture trendy plus-size fashion at affordable prices
Size of store: 1,800 square feet
CEO/owner: Christine Sholl
Latest annual revenue: $800,000 in 2010
Employees: four
Projected hiring: At least two more people in September
What’s next: extending store hours, expanding wholesale business to other stores across the
nation
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