Business
Why Fashion Nova bought a $118-million office space in Beverly Hills
When fast-fashion retailer Fashion Nova was searching for a new headquarters, the pull of Beverly Hills was strong.
The city is one of the world’s luxury capitals, and its palm tree-lined streets are home to billionaires, Hollywood stars and high-end brands including Gucci and Dior. Compared with Fashion Nova’s current base in Vernon, a gritty, heavily industrial spit of land southeast of downtown L.A., the glitz of Beverly Hills offered the upgrade that founder and Chief Executive Richard Saghian wanted.
“Mostly all our celebrity partners, influencers, our employees, vendors, they all live and work around Beverly Hills,” Saghian said. “Plus, it’s close to where I live and I think it’s great for the brand.”
This month, the 43-year-old billionaire closed a deal on a contemporary office building at the edge of the city’s real estate “golden triangle.” He paid $118 million in cash for the property at 407 N. Maple Drive.
Fashion Nova’s new headquarters in Beverly Hills.
(Michael Allen Creative/Fashion Nova)
Celebrities including Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion have helped boost Fashion Nova’s appeal as the company has produced low-cost, trendy clothes that offer women a way to tap into the latest fashion trends at a fraction of the cost of luxury brands.
Founded in 2006, Fashion Nova was ahead of the curve when it came to harnessing influencer marketing. As it cements its place in an upscale neighborhood of Beverly Hills, the brand continues to bet big on social media and star power.
The stakes are high in the relentless world of fast fashion as competition with other industry players heats up, most notably with Shein, a Singapore-based juggernaut that is growing its presence in the United States and releases new clothes at a breakneck pace. Shein also has operations in Los Angeles.
Neil Saunders, managing director at data analytics and consulting firm GlobalData Retail, said Fashion Nova will need to find ways to keep pace with Shein, which “has really just upped the tempo and it’s very cheap.”
“That’s definitely pulled a little bit of market share and spending away from some of the more traditional and more established players.”
The fast-fashion industry has become crowded with retailers such as H&M, ASOS, PrettyLittleThing and Forever 21 competing for sales that have stagnated as shoppers have pulled back on spending amid high inflation. Publicly traded companies such as H&M and ASOS have seen their sales drop this year.
“There’s no doubt the market has become a little bit more challenging,” Saunders said. “People have cut back slightly on the amount of things they buy because of pressures on their budgets.”
Fashion Nova, which is privately owned, has annual sales of approximately $2 billion and 40 million followers on social media, according to a news release about the new office space.
Over the years, the fast-fashion industry has also faced concerns about sustainability and cheap labor. Still, for many consumers, price and style are at the top of their minds, Saunders said. With consumers buying from various brands, there’s room for more than one retailer to dominate, he said.
Fashion Nova’s new office space is one way the brand is strengthening its relationship with celebrities and influencers in Los Angeles. The company is planning to open an invitation-only Nova Social Club — where creators, influencers, celebrities and VIP guests can collaborate — and a Nova Founders Lab to help emerging brands, designers, creatives and founders.
“If there’s a celebrity that wants to, for example, start a brand, we can partner together,” Saghian said.
The 175,000-square-foot building, purchased from real estate company Tishman Speyer, features an atrium sky bridge, a solarium, Zen-like gardens and an outdoor terrace. The retailer plans to add a fitness studio, a wellness spa, a cosmetic micro-treatment bar and other amenities.
Fashion Nova’s new headquarters for its more than 500 employees is scheduled to open later this year. Even as remote work becomes more popular, Saghian said interacting in the office is key to the brand’s success and growth.
Properties in the Beverly Hills area were selling for almost double the price a few years ago, Saghian said. The office building on Maple Drive wasn’t on the market, but Saghian said he made a compelling case with an all-cash offer.
The purchase is among the priciest office transactions this year for Beverly Hills, CoStar data show. Offices in that area typically sell for $344 per square foot; Saghian paid about $674 per square foot for the building. In 2005, Tishman Speyer paid more than $70.7 million for the building, so the purchase price represents a nearly 67% sales premium. The city’s office vacancy rate is 16.1%, above the national average of 13.8%.
Saunders said it’s a smart move for a brand like Fashion Nova to put its headquarters at the heart of where fashion and style are in California. Influencer marketing is just one piece of what entices people to buy clothes.
“Consumers will look at influencers and they’ll take cues from them, but the products have to be good, the designs have to be good, the price points have to be right,” Saunders said.
Fashion Nova has five brick-and-mortar stores in Southern California, including at the Shops at Montebello and the Northridge Mall. The brand has adapted to the rise of e-commerce, launching its online store in 2013 and releasing a shopping app.
The company isn’t done growing. The brand plans to expand in other cities including London, Hong Kong, Sydney and New York.
Saghian has snapped up other luxury real estate in Los Angeles. In 2022, he purchased “The One” megamansion for $141 million.
“I’ve always viewed real estate as a long-term, generational investment, and I just think it’s a great place to invest,” he said. “And why not purchase when the market’s down, you know?”
Times staff writer Roger Vincent contributed to this report.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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