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April 6, 2001/Nisan 13, 5761, Vol. 53, No.27
Store owner brings touch of New York to Valley
BETH OLSON
Staff Writer
Keeping teen girls dressed in their favorite brands - Abercrombie & Fitch, The Gap, Limited Too - can be costly for parents. But New York Fashion Outlet in Tempe helps these teens dress for less.
Sonja Trontz and her husband of nearly seven years, Scott, opened NYFO in August 1995. The store carries designer brand clothes at a lower cost than department stores because they buy manufacturers' overruns, Trontz explains. All of the clothes are brand new and some are from the current season, while others are last year's designs.
The store, which carries clothes in girls' and juniors' sizes, has a New York City dˇcor with murals and a graffiti wall. Trontz says that one back-to-school season they had teen shoppers leave messages for their friends to create the graffiti wall.
The graffiti wall is just one of many techniques Trontz has used to attract customers. She says that since teens don't tend to read newspapers, where stores would typically advertise, it is necessary to come up with innovative ways to get them to visit the store.
In addition, Trontz hosts a fashion show, with local teens as the models, and a pajama party to sell new sleepwear.
In November, Trontz opened a new shoe store, On Your Toes, located on Mill Avenue in Tempe, near Arizona State University.
"There is no fashion footwear anywhere by that college, so we saw a huge opportunity," says Trontz.
Unlike NYFO, On Your Toes carries only brand-new styles.
"We try to be a little bit different and cutting edge and not have the same stuff that is in the malls," she explains.
Trontz grew up in Tempe and retail business ownership runs in her family. She says she used to spend summers with her grandparents helping in their store.
"(I) did inventory and worked the cash register, so I grew up with retail," she recalls.
She attended McClintock High School in Tempe, went to college at Northeastern University in Boston and graduated with a dual major in marketing and entrepreneurship. While attending Northeastern, she met Scott while in the marketing program. They married in May 1994.
After graduation, Trontz worked for designer Liz Claiborne in the garment center in New York as a marketing analyst, and then worked for Scott's family manufacturing business. She eventually attended interior design school for a year in New York before the couple decided to move to the Valley to start a family.
"We decided we'd rather raise our kids here than in New York City," says Trontz.
Since moving to Chandler, Trontz has give birth to her first child, Danielle, 11 months.
Trontz is active in the Miriam chapter of Hadassah - following in the footsteps of her mother, Marcia Gurian, who is a Hadassah lifetime member and former president of her own Hadassah chapter.
NYFO is located at 1840 E. Warner Road, Suite 135, and On Your Toes is located at 411 S. Mill Ave., Suite 102.
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