The owner of an upscale boutique who has lamented the effect celebrity-stalking paparazzi were having on his shop has become an investor in a paparazzi agency.
Last October, Fraser Ross said the paparazzi who regularly wait outside his boutique, Kitson, were hurting his business, which caters to the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
“There’s a wake-up call here,” Ross said after Lohan crashed her car nearby while trying to evade the photographers. “It’s not good for my store; it’s not good for business on the street.”
The same month, however, Ross became an investor and an officer in a new paparazzi agency called Sunset Photo and News LLC, which is run by a veteran tabloid reporter and celebrity photographer.
Even in the no-holds-barred world of the Hollywood paparazzi, some tabloid veterans said they have never heard of such an arrangement.
“He is working all the angles,” said Frank Griffin, co-owner of the Bauer Griffin agency, who is considered the dean of the paparazzi scene. “He, like many, knows there is (big) money in this business.”
Ross, who describes his 6-year-old boutique as “a general store for the rich,” has embraced the celebrity culture. The store, which he says has annual revenues of about $18 million, offers a $645 green tank top, $195 trucker’s hat and has created T-shirts based on the latest tabloid headlines.
Blair Berk, a Beverly Hills attorney who represents Lohan, Halle Berry and Reese Witherspoon, said there has long been suspicion that some merchants try to get their businesses named in gossip magazines by tipping off paparazzi when celebrities come into their stores,
“It is outrageous, but not unexpected,” Berk said.
Ross and his attorney, Glenn Feldman, said he is a “passive investor” who has no role in running Sunset Photo. Feldman said his client saw a good business opportunity and wanted to help his friend, Jill Ishkanian, become the first female head of a paparazzi agency.