Houndstooth Pulls Kiosks; Sales Up 30 Percent

Houndstooth Clothing Co. of Fayetteville pulled its kiosks from four malls in Mississippi and Tennessee after December ice storms froze Christmas retail sales in some locations. The company now has seven retail locations open.

“The storms hit, and it was like they were following our locations,” said Michael Baker, who started the retro T-shirt company in 1992.

Baker said Houndstooth, which had sales of about $2 million last year, was on plan to increase same-store sales by 10 percent in 2000 before the storms hit. As a result, same-store sales increased by 2 percent instead, although overall sales were up by 30 percent for the year.

Baker said two Houndstooth locations in the Little Rock area had no sales at all for three days because the malls were closed for that amount of time.

“If you have a day at zero that close to Christmas, you’re not going to make it up,” he said. “Most people in retail had it rough for the Christmas season.”

Baker said the company uses kiosks in malls instead of in-line stores to be more flexible. If sales are less than expected, the kiosks can be closed or moved to malls in other cities. By using the kiosks, Houndstooth also avoids long-term lease agreements.

Houndstooth opened its first out-of-state locations last year — five mall kiosks in Tennessee and Mississippi. The company used those locations to test its product’s popularity outside Arkansas.

The out-of-state locations sold T-shirts designed by Houndstooth to promote college athletic teams in those areas. In Arkansas, the company also sells a popular line of T-shirts emblazoned with the word “Houndstooth” that promotes the company itself.

“It was our hope that we’d be able to run them all year long,” Baker said of the out-of-state locations that were closed.

Houndstooth has one store at 29 N. Block Ave. in downtown Fayetteville. The rest of its locations are at mall kiosks. After Christmas, the company closed its kiosks in the Mississippi cities of Jackson and Tupelo and the Tennessee cities of Nashville and Chattanooga. All of the recently closed locations were profitable and may be reopened later this year except for Nashville, Baker said.

“Nashville bombed,” he said. “It was a bloodbath. It was awful.”

Instead of Nashville, however, Baker is looking to open kiosk locations possibly in Tulsa, Hot Springs and Texarkana.

Currently, the only out of state Houndstooth location is in Memphis. Besides the downtown Fayetteville store, the company has mall kiosks in Fayetteville, Little Rock, North Little Rock, Jonesboro and Fort Smith.