Angeleno is pleased to present a selection of extraordinary women who are dynamic leaders in their field. These women of distinction are truly accomplished and stand out as some of the best influencers and contributors of our community.

Social media has minted its own internet celebrities, but many entrepreneurs are trying to judge whether platforms such as Instagram and Facebook will make fortunes for retailers.

With the billions of people checking social media every day, these platforms should be natural candidates for shopping. In mid-2020, the platforms, both owned by Facebook Inc., the Menlo Park, Calif., technology conglomerate that earned more than $70 billion in 2019, introduced Instagram Shops and Facebook Shops. In the future, consumers will be able to pay for items through Facebook’s Messenger and Instagram Direct.

The timing to introduce the Shops feature could not be better. 2020 was the year that digital commerce skyrocketed. E-commerce sales increased 49 percent during the 2020 holiday season, according to a report from Mastercard Spending Pulse, a market-research group of the Mastercard payments network. However, commerce on social media is still considered relatively new yet a force that is gaining momentum, said Paula Rosenblum, managing partner and co-founder of Retail Systems Research, a Miami, Fla., market-research company focused on retail technology.

Currently, social media is an important forum to introduce consumers to products, Rosenblum said. “What you are talking about here is the purchase journey. It fits into product discovery,” she said.

Product discovery is a primary social-media function for Lisa Kline, a once-prominent bricks-and-mortar retailer. In 2011, she closed her Lisa Kline physical boutiques, which had cultivated a big following when they did business on high-profile shopping streets such as Los Angeles’ Robertson Boulevard.

Since 2011, she has worked as a retail consultant for high-end hotels like Shutters on the Beach and organizing brand placement for programs such as the “Today Show.” But in June 2020, she got back into retail by opening shoplisakline.com, a Los Angeles–headquartered digital-commerce retailer where the @shoplisakline Instagram page is an important part of the operation.

She uses Instagram and Facebook profiles to tell the world about products that she is curating and to reintroduce Lisa Kline to the shopping public. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, and definitely before digital commerce dominated retail, the way to tell the world that a retailer was ready to do business typically required opening a physical store. Along with serving as a place to make transactions, the physical store would serve as something of a billboard, according to conventional retail wisdom.

“Social Media has been crucial for promoting my new website, letting people know I am back in the space, and promoting brands. I already see it working by bringing in sales off of Instagram and Facebook posts. In 2021, there will be a big focus on promotion via those social-media channels,” she said.

Social media has been reaching its revenue-making potential for Wallis Barton, who makes most of her income from the vintage-fashion boutique The Cornwall Collection, which she runs on the Instagram page @thecornwallcollection. She also earns money through working as a style influencer on the Instagram page @_wallis_. If it weren’t for Instagram, her avocation for vintage fashion would have remained a serious hobby. Since 2018, she has sold vintage designer fashions, as well as vintage T-shirts, and, more recently, furniture and homewares on @thecornwallcollection. She believes that many who are interested in vintage clothing’s sustainability angle visit her profile page.

“It’s a lot Gen Z and Millennials” Barton said. “They pay through Venmo and give an address. I put their orders in the mail.” For those who do not frequent Instagram, she has also produced the e-commerce boutique thecornwallcollection.com. However, the informality of social media has built a community around her Instagram pages, she said. “I put an item on the page, and they DM me,” Barton said of the direct messaging feature on Instagram.

The pictures and the video she posts also develop a conversation around the clothing that she sells. “[Shoppers] get to have an experience,” Barton said. “You get to know me and it feels more personal. I am not a nameless, faceless company. You are helping to support me, my rescue dog and two cats.”

BY ANDREW ASCH

“The relationship between a buyer like me and a designer is special,” says Lisa Kline  (shoplisakline.com). “I find pure  joy in connecting and engaging  with such talented people.”  

Kline opened her first shop on Robertson in the ’90s, and  before long, it was the go-to spot  for unique and stylish apparel,  decor, accessories and more. “We  set the tone for what was hot or  not in retail, and people from all  over the U.S. and the world came  to shop trends and take home a  piece of L.A. style.” Kline closed  the last of her six stores in 2012,  and has since reinvented herself  as a digital retailer—25 years after opening her first boutique.  The eclectic mix of offerings defies categorization. “I don’t work in a box or by any rules,”  she explains. “I use pure instinct  and my eye and vision for seeking out exceptional talent.”  Here, the master curator shares  her holiday present picks.  

BY LAURA ECKSTEIN JONES

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Kline.

Lisa, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Growing up, even as a very young child, I knew I wanted to own a clothing store. Fast forward to 1995 when I opened one of the first contemporary women’s clothing stores in Los Angeles and in doing so, established Robertson Boulevard as a shopping destination. It eventually earned me the title “Queen of Robertson” by Vogue magazine and the street became a place to see and be seen. I worked really hard to bring my vision and business to life and became a trusted style source to many actors, recording artists and celebrities. In a time when my competitors were calling the paparazzi on their own famous clientele, I implemented the first ever paparazzi curtain to provide all my customers privacy while they shopped. It was always about them, they always came first.

I went on to open two Lisa Kline Men stores, two Lisa Kline Kid stores, an additional women’s store and my online store, Lisakline.com.

During my career I have been featured as an iconic retailer in magazines including Elle, In Style, Vogue, and Lucky, and on TV Networks including KTLA, E News Live, GMA, TV Guide, Hell’s Kitchen, Bravo and had a loungewear line on HSN.

Over the past several years I’ve worked as a retail consultant, using my experience to curate for clients like Shutters on the Beach, Westlake Village Inn, The Today Show, Bed Bath and Beyond and Shop LC.
Most recently though, I launched my e-commerce marketplace www.shoplisakline.com. I’m thrilled to be back in the game with a platform to introduce and promote cool brands. This time around I’m selling everything from beauty, home, gift, apothecary, apparel, men’s, women’s, kids and more. It’s super exciting!

Has it been a smooth road?
HA! Absolutely not. It was smooth-going though for many years, until the writer’s strike in November of 2007. That’s really when the bumpy road started because it was followed shortly after by the financial crash in 2008 and then things got really bad when my husband died in a freak accident in January of 2009. Overnight I became a widow with two kids under five years old in the middle of a recession with 6 clothing stores and 100 employees. My children became my top priority and I ended up having to close all my shops. It was heartbreaking, extremely difficult and took years to unravel.

Alright – so let’s talk business. What else should we know about you and your career so far?
I’m honored to be revered in the fashion industry as an innovative retailer, merchandiser and designer. What sets me apart is I have been in this industry now for 25 years and have an established, trusted brand that people can count on.

As a curator I do everything from sourcing, branding, merchandising, design, business strategy, marketing and more. I also do a ton of brand placement so I still get to work with brands all day everyday. My love and passion is, and always has been, discovering creative talent and collaborating with them to promote their brands. That connection is pure magic. It’s what I am most proud of; building brands from infancy and giving them a platform to shine. It’s why I am so happy about re-launching my website!

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Like most businesses the fashion industry is ever-changing. I have been keeping an eye on it, trying to figure out what it wants to be since I closed my last store in 2012. I haven’t missed a single trade show, I was never out of the game. So when the pandemic hit, it became very clear what I needed to do. The white space was wide open so I jumped back in without a second thought to help guide and direct the change this industry needs. It is interesting because the same model I used 25 years ago is holding true today in the way I marketed brands then and what I am organically doing now. I am a drop ship model which gives me the ability to merchandise and feature as much of a brand as I want to give it the presence I think it needs to sell and be promoted online. Back in the store days, I had several huge brands on consignment allowing me to give them 12 feet of real estate on prime Robertson Blvd and feature a brand’s entire collection like they had their own in store. That model was always successful. It is very important to work together, to collaborate and be partners in a sense so we can grow together. We need one another to make it work, there has to be a trust factor. What I am doing now is not very different to what I did back then.

One important change I’ve noticed is the way brands and companies hold inventory now. No one can afford to invest the same amount of money that they used to on stock for their wholesale partnerships. Even for their own stores, it is a fine line on how much stock to carry.

Also the focus of apparel isn’t as important as it was back in the day. The young kids are buying vintage and secondhand and the older crowd honestly doesn’t really care as much as they used to. With the pandemic people are working from home and their social lives are completely different now so the emphasis is on other categories like wellness and home decor.

The focus on direct-to-consumer is the future of retail. Especially since online shopping is going to be the main method for consumer spending for a very, long time. But the problem is that without having an expert to guide the consumer, how would they know what to even look for? That is where I come in with my marketplace, the trusted source for things people need and want, the best of the best. Unique products that are on trend and things the shopper didn’t even realize they needed that are very important in enhancing their lives and giving stylish, thoughtful gifts. There is literally nowhere to shop anymore online or brick and mortar due to a huge shift with all the big box stores filing bankruptcy and most of the mom and pop stores going out of business. The change is fierce and retail and the way people shop will never be the same. The key now is service, delivery and keeping things simple.