Growth on agenda for Henderson-based Bettie Page Clothing

Bettie Page may have been “an iconic figure in pop culture,” in the words of Hugh Hefner, but she hit the height of her modeling career about six decades ago.

Nevertheless, Henderson-based Tatyana Designs Inc. has set about building a nationwide chain of boutique shops under the licensed Bettie Page Clothing name based on the retro styles she helped popularize as the widely regarded “queen of pin-ups,” including flowing skirts that go below the knees, bright prints and bikinis that covered more than the legal minimum. Already operating 14 stores with another due to open in June, the company hopes to double its footprint by the end of next year if it can line up financing.

Fashion trends have a history of fizzling quickly, acknowledged co-CEO Jan Glaser, but he thinks that the 1940s and 1950s look can form the foundation for long-term profitability. “We think partly because this is a niche, it has a good chance of being more enduring than other styles,” Glaser said. “But if the concept of vintage becomes a different decade, we can always adapt.”

In addition, the strategy has called adding stores through a relatively inexpensive route, with non insider borrowings standing at $597,000 at the end of the first quarter, a little over half of shareholders equity. Tatyana has looked for urban settings popular with pedestrians to lease locations of about 2,500 square feet, with one per city except the pair in different Strip malls.

This puts the stores within easy reach of the two target markets , women aged 18-35 and looking to make a frill purchase, Glaser said. “It just so happens that a lot of younger women like that product,” he said. “And we find that in tourist areas, people are more likely to purchase things they can’t get at home.”

For that reason, Tatyana Designs would not go into a place such as Henderson’s Galleria at Sunset mall because the store would draw too few repeat customers, he added.

To hit its goal of 30 locations by the end of 2014, a pace of nearly one opening a month, the company is looking for outside investors. Should capital prove hard to come by, he said he would pull back the throttle on growth.

As part of the financing strategy, Tatyana Designs gained a Pink Sheet stock listing merging into a shell company to create a more liquid market for investors without the expense of a broker-driven underwriting. Although the stock rarely trades at this point — there were only five transactions in all of March and April — Glaser expects to gain a full over-the-counter listing and begin full Securities and Exchange Commission reporting early next year.

The company has started putting out regular releases of its results. During the first quarter, sales rose 71 percent to $3.1 million. Of that , three-fourths came from the larger lineup of stores and the rest split between online commerce or sales of Bettie Page clothing to other stores.

The costs of the expansion led to an $11,000 loss compared with the $156,000 profit the year earlier. Glaser said that the company generated positive cash flow when subtracting factors such as the depreciation of new leases.

For all of 2012, the $10.3 million in revenues marked a 42 percent gain from the year earlier, while net income dropped 29 percent to $720,000.

The company started in 2006 as the vision of Glaser’s wife, Tatyana Khomyakova, who long had wanted to design women’s clothing. Coming to Las Vegas in the mid-1990s after marrying Glaser, she had worked as a docent for Steve Wynn’s art collection.

She started with a shop at what was then called the Desert Passage mall, now the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood, while exhibiting at the MAGIC apparel convention in Las Vegas. By the time the merger with the shell company was complete in August and the name changed to Tatyana Designs, the store roster had grown to eight.

The cities include Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco and the massive Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.

On the way to 30 stores, Glaser said he is scouting locations in Canada and Great Britain.

Contact reporter Tim O’Reiley at
toreiley@reviewjournal.com or at 702-387-5290