From food, fashion to flowers, sellers set up shop in trucks

— -- At first, people didn't get it.

The funky trucks parked throughout Portland, Ore., neighborhoods were all selling food. When Vanessa Lurie set up her boutique on wheels, people came in expecting cupcakes, not plaid bow ties and vintage dresses.

"People thought I was a bakery," the 29-year-old says of her teal 1969 Cardinal Deluxe travel trailer. "People didn't know what to think about it."

That was in the fall of 2010. Now Lurie's fashion truck, called Wanderlust, gets about 100 customers a day in the form of regulars, tourists and others who peek in while waiting out brunch lines at neighboring restaurants.

"It's an eye-catcher," she says.

It's also an inexpensive and easy way to start a business that entrepreneurs such as Lurie are increasingly turning to.

Across the country, fashionistas, hair stylists and even florists are gutting old delivery-type trucks and turning them into decked-out mobile stores, avoiding the overhead costs associated with brick-and-mortar retail and bringing consumers in cities including Austin, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., New York City and Boston a new and more personal way to shop.

An accessible business model

Stacey Steffe was selling vintage clothing at craft fairs and farmers markets in Los Angeles when she met Jeanine Romo, who was selling her jewelry line. After witnessing the success of gourmet food trucks that also frequented the markets, the two collaborated to launch Le Fashion Truck in January 2011.

"We were both so tired of packing and unpacking our cars for every event and thought, how fun would it be to put our product in a truck?" Steffe says.

The pair invested $2,000 in a 1974 International Box Truck they found on Craigslist and a couple of thousand more renovating it.

"We didn't have the capital needed to go into a brick-and-mortar in Los Angeles," Steffe says.

Lurie says the same of starting from a truck rather than a fixed location.

"It seemed more within my grasp," she says, adding that the retail spaces she looked at before buying her $400 truck off Craigslist were "prohibitively expensive."

A truck is a cheaper and faster way of doing business, one backed by the power of social media and the freedom to go to your customers, rather than waiting for them to come to you, says Dave Lavinsky, founder of Growthink, a firm that helps entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

"The mobile retail option literally saves hundreds of thousands of dollars," he says.

Truck owners say they start profiting quickly due to a low initial investment. Lurie says she was making a profit her first year in business. Her products range from about $5 to $80, and during nice weather she says she sells "a couple hundred dollars a day" in merchandise.

Joey Wolffer of The Styleliner, based in the Hamptons and New York City, says she made a profit her first summer in business, in 2010. Although she declined to give specific figures, Styleliner spokeswoman Sara Droz says sales from the truck and from its e-commerce site have doubled in the past year. The clothing and accessories Wolffer sells by international designers as well as handbags from her own line range from $18 to $1,800.

It's those types of vintage and handmade pieces most fashion trucks sell that help keep shoppers engaged, owners say.