Coast By Coast Drives Beachy Retail Therapy Out East

Five years ago, Kristen Cleary and Jordana Longo purchased the domain name coastbycoast.com in the hopes of one day launching a clothing website catering to women who strive to live a casual, beachy lifestyle.

That day is about to come. In the meantime, before the website’s official launch next year, the two friends are traveling all over New York and, soon enough, cross country in order to test-drive their idea—literally.

Their shop, Coast by Coast, curates clothing and accessories from different brands in the swim and coastal lifestyle industries, and showcases them in a 1972 Volkswagen bus. From bikinis and breezy dresses to organic beauty products and rustic jewelry, the line carries “anything you need to outfit your lifestyle for living on the beach,” Ms. Cleary said last weekend during a trunk show at Urban Zen in Sag Harbor.

The duo drives the “bus-tique,” stamped with the company’s name, from their home base in Brooklyn across Long Island on a weekly basis, often setting up shop in Montauk and Amagansett when they’re not in Williamsburg.

They unofficially teamed up in 2010 after realizing they shared a love of fashion and art—common ground discovered during their time living in neighboring apartments on the Lower East Side, endless chatting and forming a fast friendship.

The girls set off on their epic fashion adventure Memorial Day weekend, not long after purchasing the vintage bus and shipping it out to the East Coast from Long Beach, California. Now, they’re using their mobile boutique to get a sense of what women would like to buy from them before they launch an e-commerce website next year.

“We thought this would be a good way to get to know our customer, and we wanted to have a presence in New York and the Hamptons, and kind of bring the beach lifestyle here from the West Coast,” explained 30-year-old Ms. Cleary, an Ohio native who moved to New York about eight years ago. “It’s really nice to have this opportunity in the beginning to interact with [our customer] and get to know who she is.”

Recently, the entrepreneurs used their bus to display artwork during the Amagansett Historical Society’s “Intertidal Zone” show in early July, transforming their business into a mini art gallery.

“Art and design have a strong influence,” said 29-year-old Ms. Longo, who is originally from Toronto, Canada, but relocated to New York a decade ago. “We’re both just really passionate about the creative artistic aspects of where we wanna take this brand.”

In October, the duo will drive to Los Angeles, bringing the bus back to its roots along the pristine beaches of California’s coastline, documenting their journey on Instagram as they go. But for now, they’re basking in all that is Coast by Coast, inspired by “the nomadic nature of travel,” they say.

“It started off in different iterations and kind of, like, came to fruition to a point where the timing was just right and the project is just right,” Ms. Longo said. “And here we are.”