Over these last couple of years, the gourmet food truck craze has taken over LA. Even at Marlborough, we’ve endorsed this phenomenon: just last year, The Green Truck provided catering services for the school while Café M was under construction. Also, last week the All-School Council arranged for the renowned Kogi Truck to visit the school.
Designer stores have began to adopt this food truck concept, mobilizing their businesses to reconnect with customers in their own backyards.
Designers have given a whole new meaning to the phrase “fashion forward,” morphing their stores into on-the-go “Fashion Trucks.” These stores-on-wheels have been spotted travelling all across the country.

Retailers like Hello Kitty, Shipley & Halmos and Alice + Olivia have begun to follow this trend. Sketchers has just finished a coast-to-coast summer “Shape Up America Tour.”

Despite the intrigue, the ultimate question consumers should be asking, is: Are these fashion trucks the better way to buy?

Fashion designer, Cynthia Rowley thinks so.

Rowley’s “mobile style unit” – a converted courier truck that serves as a boutique on wheels – has been on the road for the last year and most recently toured the West Coast.

As Rowley told the Los Angeles Times: “It’s the ultimate in customer service…it’s more convenient, more immediate and more of an experience than buying online, to actually bring the store to our consumers.”

I believe that these trucks are beneficial, for they serve as a means to promote brands in areas that may not have had access to these stores otherwise. Also, these “Fashion Trucks” provide a more personal kind of shopping experience because the space is much cozier than your larger, intimidating designer store and is more engaging than shopping online.
If you want to find out when a Shop on Wheels will be visiting your community, for more information, follow them on Twitter.