Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Garmentory branched out into the in-real-life trade show experience.
The company today caps a two-day mini-showroom event taking place at the trendy Line Hotel in Los Angeles where it assembled a group of brands showing fall product to buyers.
Garmentory’s riding a wave of more curated trade shows in Los Angeles for market this week — that includes Brand Assembly and the more recent addition of Capsule.
“I feel like something is happening in L.A. in that way,” said Adele Tetangco, cofounder and vice president of merchandise and brand at Garmentory. “When I went [to L.A.] last season, because I’m so in tune with the designers and the stores, designers really wanted something a little bit more curated and smaller to show at. There’s definitely a need for it, even in New York, where I’ve seen a lot of designers take a step back from doing a trade show to doing something smaller. The Line has never done anything with fashion and so it seemed like such a good fit and everything just fell into a place.”
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The concept is akin to what Garmentory does online with a marketplace of over 400 independent boutiques and 3,000 emerging and contemporary designers selling apparel, home goods and accessories. In January the company expanded into men’s.
The Los Angeles event follows a similar template for what Garmentory did with the Capsule New York show in February when it teamed with the trade show on a showcase of women’s brands for fall. Garmentory is doing L.A. on its own.
The event, which is only open to the trade, has a roster of apparel, jewelry, footwear, accessories and apothecary brands including Carleen, Priory, Ilana Kohn, Pari Desai, Brookes Boswell, Sara Barner, Leigh Miller, Maria Dora, Metalepsis Projects, Bode, Sunja Link, Young Frankk, LOQ, Another Feather, Micaela Greg, Ali Golden and Na Nin.
“I just really wanted to give a good representation of Garmentory,” Tetangco said. “Garmentory functions as a community. We’re about bringing community together and what better way than for us to do this.”
The company’s goal is to see about 100 attendees across the two-day period.
The privately held company doesn’t disclose financials but expects to see 500 percent growth in 2017, following a similar trajectory last year.
The online marketplace in November closed on a $2 million pre-A round, about a year after raising a $1.3 million seed.