By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief
Clothing brand Popular Poison, founded by Palisadian Tim Maduro, has opened a pop-up shop on Sunset Boulevard in the space formerly occupied by Valentina—marking its first brick-and-mortar location.
“I’ve been in the apparel industry for many years as an importer and decided to go to quick-turn,” Maduro explained to the Palisadian-Post.
After many years of facing dilemmas dealing with importing, Maduro decided he wanted to have the ability to turn quickly, setting up Popular Poison out of downtown Los Angeles, where 100% of its goods are embellished, like tie-dyes, prints and speciality alterations. The brand focuses on clothing for men and women, including T-shirts, hoodies and accessories.
“We just launched our e-comm a couple of years ago, and decided to take the next step and get a few of our own locations,” he shared, adding that the switch to downtown LA allowed him to have a business model that could turn items around in two to three weeks.
The pop-up space came to fruition after a neighbor introduced Maduro to the building owner, who had a vacant storefront after Valentina’s recent departure from the Palisades. He said that within a five-minute conversation, it was decided that he would take it and open a shop.
“We’re still calling it a pop-up and will through the month,” Maduro said, “but we’re pretty sure we’re going to keep it.”
Popular Poison has operated a showroom at Cal Mart, but Maduro shared plans to do wholesale out of the Palisades space as well, saying that people who come into town for the appointments like to come visit the community anyway.
Maduro explained there are around 1,500 pieces in the store between the hoodies and T-shirts, and he plans to keep it “fully stocked.”
One of the things that Maduro said has surprised him since opening the space, which is located at 15224 Sunset Boulevard, is the amount of foot traffic he sees early in the week between 4 and 7 p.m. while people are running errands and walking around the Village area. He shared that the response from the community so far has been “really good.”
Maduro has two daughters: one at Palisades Charter High School and the other at Paul Revere Charter Middle School. They first moved to the Alphabet Streets in 2011 before recently making the move to the Highlands.
When it comes to the Palisades, Maduro, who grew up in New York, loves the sense of community. His wife is from Seoul, but the two met in NY when she was working in the “hustle bustle.”
He shared that since the warehouse and manufacturing is downtown, he departs “every day to go into the industrial cement,” but returns to an area that he loves—especially the schools.
As for the future of Popular Poison, Maduro said he is open to expanding to locations in additional areas, including Las Vegas. At the Palisades iteration, he was in the process of installing a social wall for TikToks.
“We have usually around 20 new styles that publish a week that we ship to our retail partners,” Maduro explained. “We’re going to start to market that through our website on a weekly basis for new arrivals to the store—a lot of fun kind of stuff like that.”
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