DEATH AS A SALESMAN : COUNTY CORONER'S GIFT SHOP HAS OFFBEAT STUFF YOU'D KILL FOR.

Byline: Glenn Gaslin Daily News Staff Writer

The skeletons won't be big sellers. Too gruesome. Too realistic.

Or so says Greg Vella, president of Hazama International Co. Ltd., a trendy threads company that bought the rights to sell Los Angeles County Coroner's Office Gift Shop items in Japan.

The store's other death-themed fun wear - the toe tag keychains, the T-shirts and towels emblazoned with chalk-drawn body outlines, the ``undertakers'' boxer shorts - should be adorning the live, warm bodies of Tokyo teens in no time.

But marketing tests in Japan showed that not everything will go over so well.

``The thing is,'' Vella says, looking at a T-shirt featuring a skinless, boney creature grinning through a magnifying glass, ``we didn't have as much success with the skeletons.''

The gift shop, called Skeletons in the Closet and located in the coroner's office downtown, has peddled more than $700,000 worth of merchandise in the three years since it opened.

Death sells. And Vella hopes it'll be even bigger in Japan.

``They've had a lot of famous cases here,'' said Vella, who handed a $30,000 check to the coroner's office Monday. It will go, along with other store proceeds, toward a county youth drunk-driving and crime-deterrence program. ``They handled John Belushi and Marilyn Monroe. There's a kind of mystery about the L.A. County coroner.''

In the hallway outside the shop, Craig Harvey, chief of operations, briefed TV news crews about developments in the death of Margaux Hemingway and that of a woman who was beaten and killed during an exorcism.

Inside, Marilyn Lewis, who started and runs the shop, showed off her best sellers.

``This has kind of humanized the department,'' she said, rubbing her fingers into a black beach towel decorated with a life-size murder-victim outline. ``People get a kick out of it.''

Vella plans to expand the Japanese inventory to include handkerchiefs and body, er, tote bags.

``In Japan, they have a very big fascination now with detective stories and also West Coast fashions,'' he said.

The hip kids wear duds and logos from our surfers and snowboarders and hip-hoppers. So why not from our dead?

Vella expects Japanese high school and college students to be the L.A. County Coroner's biggest fans, and the chalk-body T-shirt to be the hottest seller.

``The girls,'' he said, ``they think it's cute.''

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Photo

Photo: Greg Vella, president of Hazama International Co. Lt d., displays one of the items sold by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office Gift Shop. Vella's company bought the rights to sell the items in Japan.

Associated Press