What Fashion Trucks Deliver Besides Clothes

Driving the streets of American right  now are over 500 trucks packed to capacity with fashion, mobile boutiques cruising for customers with a new type of entrepreneur at the wheel.

The rise of the fashion truck, the food truck of the sartorially inclined, started about four years ago and taken off exponentially in that last twelve months, the  American Mobile Retail Association (AMRA) told Business Insider. 

Business owners like Jessie Goldenberg whose NOMAD truck is a full mobile boutique that operated in New York’s flat-iron district. Goldenberg wanted to open a shop in NYC post graduation, but found that it was unrealistic for her financially speaking, and instead began working in television and film production.  Then she saw a segment on fashion trucks. 

“It was pretty instant,” she says, on how long it took for inspiration to hit. “I’m the type of person that as soon as I get an idea in my head, I go for it.”

On delivery truck, some remodeling, a few small loans and a crowdsourced fundraiser later, she was in businesses as NOMAD.  The total cost of staring the business was $70 K, and the monthly overhead is around $1,000.  That is far less than the $150K in costs she faced with a shop (in Brooklyn, not Manhattan), or 3K in monthly costs she faces as a traditional shop.

Fashion trucks offer their goods cheaper on the whole, but, according to BI seem to have a limited lifespan with most trucks last for two years before owners convert to a traditional shop or move on to another venture.