Sellers of stolen jeans find buyers in Atlanta salons

By Nedra Rhone

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Camille Wright was at a Stone Mountain hair salon getting her hair styled, when a guy strolled in with a steal — Ralph Lauren polo shirts and True Religion jeans for the bargain price of $25. The conversation with Wright, owner of Kaleidoscope Boutique in Decatur, went something like this:

“Where did you get all that stuff?” Wright asked.

“From different sources, off-price,” the guy said.

“Your sources are people who steal from boutiques like mine,” Wright said, nearly jumping out of the chair.

And out the door he went.

The traveling denim salesman is a common sight in Atlanta, as about $1.5 million in premium denim and sportswear stolen from metro area stores over the past 30 months finds its way to consumers on the street. Police say hair salons, flea markets, car trunks and houses — most recently one in southeast Atlanta — are all venues for unloading the hot jeans. That’s "hot" as in stolen, good looking and extremely popular, which makes it harder for cash-strapped consumers to walk away and easy for street sellers to make a decent dollar.

Premium denim, the main booty of thieves police have dubbed the “blue jean bandits,” is one of the few apparel categories still on the rise in traditional retail outlets. Sales of the $100 and up jeans, which first came to market several years ago, grew 17 percent in 2008, according to NPD Group, Inc.

Denim devotees are willing to spend more money to get what they feel is higher quality.

“It’s kind of like sheets on a bed, the difference between Egyptian cotton and regular cotton," said Dan Kogan, owner of eModa.com, an online retailer with boutiques in Atlanta and Philadelphia that has lost a total $160,000 to bandits in both cities. “The washes on premium denim are done by hand. Premium denim will last 20 times longer than regular denim and they will stay high quality,” he said.

The popularity of premium denim has also been fueled by popular culture. From Brad Pitt to hip-hop videos, demand for True Religion, Rock & Republic, and Robin’s Jeans — some of the main brands that the bandits have lifted — has grown in urban areas, on college campuses and communities where residents can’t afford to spend $100 on jeans. The result is a solid business opportunity for a guy with an armful of $200 stolen denim priced at $50 or less.

Property crimes in Atlanta rose 7.6 percent from 2007 to 2008, compared to a nationwide decrease of 1.6 percent according to data from the FBI 2008 Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report, but it isn’t clear how much of the increase can be attributed to retail theft.

A newly formed task force of the Atlanta Police Department’s Target Enforcement Unit and Anti-gang Initiative is focusing more resources on combating the smash and grabs, said Sgt. Archie Ezell. Officers are working with other states to give descriptions of possible suspects and suspect vehicles. Also, earlier this month, police arrested 11 suspected bandits after they were caught cutting tags from hundreds of pairs of stolen jeans and other items in the backyard of a southeast Atlanta home.

But the law of supply and demand rules even when it comes to street sales, and buyers of stolen property must take some of the blame.

“It’s common sense that you can’t buy a $200 pair of jeans on the street for $50,” Ezell said. “I think [buyers] add to the problem, but the bigger problem is that people are actually stealing it.”

Mobile salesmen, who may get their supply of denim directly from the thieves, are not so easy to apprehend. They sell from trunks of cars pulled to the side of the gas station or they show up in hair salons.

Vanessa Martinez, 36, a commercial real estate agent, has seen a number of minority-owned businesses allow solicitors to sell everything from puppies to perfume. Though she has never purchased jeans from a salon (she has too much trouble finding the right fit), she confesses to sending orders for 1,000 count bedsheets that cost $35 via her sister who goes to a salon in Marietta. “I don’t know where they get the sheets, and of course I’m not asking questions,” Martinez said.

At Crown and Glory Hair Studio, a three-year-old salon in College Park, owner Sharri Thomas started locking her door to deter solicitors from stopping in.

“They have the assumption that people in salons don’t care about buying hot merchandise,” she said. “The salon experience should be one where customers can relax and not be badgered and pulled on to buy something.”

With distribution channels such as Thomas’ salon cracking down on unsolicited solicitors, and retailers like Kogan, who has thwarted recent break-ins with security gates and is considering concrete posts to prevent a truck from backing through his West Peachtree store front, the bandits may soon find denim to be a tougher sell on the street.

If not, there’s always Wright’s brand of in-your-face public embarrassment to send the traveling denim salesman packing.

“He was stunned,” Wright said. “Nobody wanted to buy anything because I was making a scene, so he just walked out.”